Black timber
An overview of projects, products and exclusive articles about black timber
Project • By RAU • Private Houses
Villa S
Living in a wooded area calls for a house that has a harmonious relationship
with nature.A house is subtly visible amid a wooded and hilly dune landscape. This is Villa S, a house nestled in a picturesque location that has allowed its residents to enjoy beautiful forest views and a calming forest scent since the 1960s. A place that never gets boring. RAU Architects transformed this house into a villa placing nature even more at the forefront, in line with the wishes of the resident family. To create more privacy from the street, the focus is shifted to the garden bordering the coniferous forest. The relationship to the surrounding environment becomes even more intense. Only the contours of the original house have been preserved. The new mo... More
Project • By MARCH STUDIO AUSTRALIA • Private Houses
Studley Park House
Studley Park House attempts to balance large scale modern living with the optimism and ideals of the local modernist gems of the area. Structure, technology, and materials are pushed to their limits in an attempt to contrast the steep topography and native landscapes the area is famous for.
Confidently cantilevering out over the landscape to create the carport, the methodical straight lines accentuate the sloping topography allowing the inhabitants to exist with the trees became the inspiration.
The primary move was to anchor the building in to one corner of the site, balancing and cantilevering out to the other to allow vehicles to pass underneath. Pedestrian access is via a stair, hanging from the floating structure and... More
Project • By Biasol Studio • Private Houses
Casa Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro, translating to “light dark” in Italian, is the contrasting of light and shade to produce an artistic composition with dramatic and emotional impact. This technique inspired and guided the design language of Casa Chiaroscuro as we balanced natural light and dark surfaces to create voluminous and intimate spaces that have a calming effect.
Derek Swalwell
The clients engaged us to design a comfortable home that supports their young family and lifestyle now and into the future. They wanted spaces for being together, for independence and for hosting large gatherings. Their design brief – modern, minimal and beautiful – gave us the freedom to use colour and materials in a way we hadn’t seen before.... More
Project • By SeARCH • Primary Schools
Het Epos
Our circular modular timber school Het Epos in Rotterdam is complete and fully operational. Both staff and pupils are very happy with the fresh yet cozy building and are making excellent use of the different spaces.
Het Epos primary school is an initiative of The Verre Bergen Foundation. This foundation aims to give back to the city of Rotterdam by setting up a new school in Zuidwijk, an area in the southern part of the city which is socioeconomically disadvantaged. In this innovative primary school teachers are given more allocated teaching time with students than the Dutch average, so they can better support the individual needs of the students.
SeARCH, together with builder De Groot Vroomshoop, has developed a new way o... More
Project • By YSG Studio • Apartments
1906 Apartment
CLIENT BRIEF To transform the one-bedroom/two-bathroom apartment into a chic and broody penthouse that was ultimately versatile, enabling the solo owner who travels frequently to host intimate dinner parties through to large gatherings, and accommodate visiting friends on occasion.
CONCEPT Coastal market conventions were completely flipped by not treating the walls with white paint (customarily drawing the gaze towards the harbour) and by refraining from designing the layout of the apartment to solely face the water. The interior experience is as equally rich and layered as the outside view. Dark hues including indigo walls are paired with decadent materials (including a rust and ochre-toned splashback and feature backdrop to the k... More
Project • By Neil Dusheiko Architects • Private Houses
Black Ridge House
Two-storey extension to an existing property on the Warner Estate, made of charred black timber and concrete work surfaces - a fusion of modern industrial materials within a historic domestic setting.
This is a project for our clients, Harriett and Jeremy “Jez” Hindmarsh. Harriett is the Corporate Vice President of Global Marketing and Communications for AECOM, one of the largest multi-disciplinary architecture and design practices in the world. Jez is a former drummer with Swervedriver and now turned landscape designer.
The Black Ridge house is an extension to an existing 3-bedroom Victorian terraced house forming part of the Warner Estate in Walthamstow. The existing homes built in that period were made one room deep... More
Project • By Cox Architecture • Offices
Mazda Headquarters
The New Mazda Headquarters seeks to create and incorporate the latest thinking in workplace design and flexible environments to achieve outstanding cultural and environmental design outcomes for the clients. The design subverts the metaphor of a seemingly bland, ‘typical’ black timber box. The focal point or heart is addressed by use of a ‘town square’ and ‘street’ that create a centre of gravity and activated line of sight that runs the length of the workspace. The unique requirement of a workshop and the historic separation of such ‘dirty’ environments from white collar areas provided the opportunity to reframe the workshop as a surgical and dramatic space; where computers, machinery and hum... More
Project • By De Rosee Sa • Private Houses
Kilnwood
Known as Kilnwood, the property is located on the edge of the Mendip Hills with an extensive view overlooking Glastonbury Tor. The brief for the project given to De Rosee Sa was to ensure that the renovation and new build share the same local vernacular and architectural language as that of other nearby farms and rural buildings, such as pitched roofs and black ship-lap timber boarding.
With the main house, a converted barn, De Rosee Sa designed an impressive and welcoming entrance. The practice created a new external entrance porch which dually functions as a boot room, and within what was the original hallway, they relocated the staircase. Moving its footprint allowed for a double-height hallway, successfully opening up the space... More
Project • By AMPS Arquitectura y Diseño • Private Houses
FRIENDS LAB House
Set in beautiful Hampshire, the brief for this project was to design a cottage where friends and family could spend long periods of time just next door to the prime residence within the existing Farm.
Imagen Subliminal (Miguel de Guzmán + Rocío Romero)
With the image in mind of the double-pitched black timber cladded barns and the existing farm´s stableyard building, we engaged in a reinterpretation of the design. Of vital concern was to set the architecture within the surrounding landscape in a natural manner. A similar formal and colour approach to the existing Farmwas used for the design of the new house, but reinterpretedin a thoroughly contemporary way, from structure to finishes and importantly, a very... More
Project • By LW Design Group • Hotels
Raffles Hotel
LW Dubai team has completed a stunning interior scheme for the new Raffles Hotel in Shenzhen, China. Raffles, One Shenzhen Bay, is an iconic tower that reflects the pace of growth and modernisation of Shenzhen, and stands proud as a new beacon in opulent living. The hotel, which features 168 spacious guestrooms and suites, occupies the top floors of an 80-storey tower in the One Shenzhen Bay development.
The LW Design team, headed up by Pia Sen, was tasked with creating a contemporary interior that pays respect to the Chinese culture in which it is set. Evident throughout is the connection between the spectacular views over the bay and the design. Everywhere you look, the panoramas dominate. “We were challenged to work around... More
Project • By Full of Grace Interiors • Private Houses
South Yarra Residence 02
Two energetic young guys, Adam and James who are long time friends, bought a modest 1940’s house in South Yarra with the view to maintain the front facade of the property but build a sleek, contemporary extension at the rear to allow for a second story and rooftop terrace with uninterrupted city views. The ground floor layout consists of two bedrooms with a main bathroom with an open plan kitchen, living and dining area at the rear. The second floor is made up of a generous sized master bedroom with walk in robe and ensuite as well as a study nook, and rooftop terrace. Both Adam and James work as project managers on large scale luxury apartments so their aim was to pull together their industry contacts and industry know-how to build t... More
Project • By Ashworth Parkes Architects Ltd. • Private Houses
Woodview
There was an existing property on the site that was demolished. It was formed from two workers cottages. It had a very long and narrow plan, was constructed to a very poor standard, had not been maintained for many years and was suffering from subsidence. It was not feasible to refurbish it to achieve, or exceed, current regulations, so demolition was our only option. Following the Pre-Application process, the planners agreed that a replacement dwelling would be acceptable, however, they stipulated that it should be black timbered, ‘barn style’, with a clay tiled roof, and it should be on the same location on the site as the original house, running parallel to the road.
We decided to treat these restrictions as an oppor... More
Project • By studiofour • Private Houses
Ridge Road Residence
What is the conceptual framework of the project – including underlying principles, values, core ideas and/or philosophy?
The site for this new house is located within the Moonah Links golf course, on the Mornington Peninsula.
A simple brief and program requirements, teamed with a dramatic site characterised by a steep slope and a single tea tree, enabled the design to become an exploration into enclosing the basic rituals of domestic life within restrained building forms, whilst at the same time exposing the building’s program to varying levels of interaction with the surrounding landscape, both immediate and beyond.
In stark contrast to the surrounding houses, which attempt to cancel out the sloping topograp... More
Project • By Annabelle Tugby Architects • Offices
The Workshop
As a young practice Annabelle Tugby Architects recently outgrew our previous studio and were seeking a new home. From the outset we sought an existing building with character which we could update in a contemporary way.
A semi-derelict former workshop was found with work on the design starting immediately. Card models and computer renders were used in conjunction with hand sketches and CAD to design throughout the process. At an early stage the decision was made to leave the main space whole and to add ancillary spaces in the form of a meeting room and WC as part of a single storey timber frame extension.
A scheme to reuse the building was submitted to planning in spring 2018. The original rendered buildingwhich provides t... More
Project • By DX Architects • Private Houses
Goldsmith Street
Elwood Residence is the result of extensive site analysis which resulted in the early decision to replace the existing dwelling. We were faced with a number of design challenges due to the unstable foundations and flood overlay of the Elwood canal and worked closely with the client to propose a light-filled contemporary solution.
Removing half of the duplex façade meant that the design for the new dwelling needed to complement, but also contrast the adjacent dwelling.
A double-height entry hallway and large spanning skylights to create a transition between the dwellings along the party-wall boundary and allows for a connection beyond the boundary of the built area.
We love a great skylight and always look to encourage natural ligh... More