Blackened wood

Approached by the client, a family in Bergen, ClaessonKoivisto Rune was commissioned to make the interior architecture of their home. The house was already designed by Canadian architect Todd Saunders and into its planning phase.   Mutual respect between the two architectural offices made the project more like a collaboration than separate commissions, although responsibility for the exterior remained with Saunders Architecture, and the interior with ClaessonKoivisto Rune Architects.   The house is on a steep plot on one of the mountainsides above the city centre. The entrance is from the top floor with kitchen, dining and living. The floor beneath contains the bedrooms. (A lowest, third, floor is reached via its own entrance... More

120  square meter apartment in the heart of the northern neighborhood of Tel Aviv.The apartment was designed and customized to the requirements of the clients before the beginning of construction.The selected color palette is 50 shades of gray. Black highlights in window profiles and lighting stand out on a white background. A shot of turquoise and nude colors contrasts with the monochromatic color palette.The couple's life dictated the layout of the apartment.To the left of the entrance is the graphite-gray kitchen. The design of the kitchen was as two parallel lines with tall cabinets that integrate the integral appliances and an island with a large stainless steel worktop.Large living room overlooking the park through the black-fram... More

When StudioSC was brought on by a boutique law firm to design their new workspace, the team was tapped to create a fresh and flexible environment that challenges the traditional approach to law office design. The firm was tasked with a gut renovation of an existing loft in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. While the loft space was small in square footage, the work for the design team was no menial task—the law office was a ground-up transformation, as the original framework of the building was completely untouched and unrefined. The existing space served as a source of inspiration for the team’s design process and was carried throughout the concept. The ceiling was cleaned and restored while solid and heavy design elements, such as a thick blackened... More

The vibrancy of China’s urban typologies lies in the variability of its elements, which reflects certain Chinese notions of communal living, or the village as extended family. Inheriting a master plan modeled after generic formations of suburbia, the challenge is to create a new paradigm of living that suits the modern Chinese lifestyle. The first move is to break down the solidity and singularity of the archetypical single family home into smaller units of living, which, when interwoven with landscape, circulation, and communal spaces, can begin to recall the vitality of Chinese living. In a newly defined notion of suburban living, landscape can no longer be relegated solely to the realm of the outside or be defined merely as grassy l... More

Černá Voda, a small mountain lodge, is situated next to the “old” ski run near the Pomezní Boudy border checkpoint in the Krkonoše mountains.The original lower ski-lift station was replaced with a new wooden structure on the confluence of Kolben and Černá Voda streams, the latter of which the chalet is named after. The owner’s wish was to have a small structure to serve as a lodge for short-term guests of the owner of the nearby Tereza mountain chalet.The mountain lodge is a wooden structure of approximately 5.3 x 5.6 m, with an adjacent steel structure terrace of approximately 5.3 x 2.5 m. The lodge has a hallway, living room with kitchen facilities, bathroom and a toilet. The sleeping space spans the upper level of a part of the living ro... More

Annalisa had always dreamed of living in a house built of wood. Whenever she talked to me about it, I had the impression of a cosy home in the mountains where she would live alone. The two of us as a couple or a family with children never came up in all the different versions that she described during the many years that we lived together. It was obvious that she was describing a very personal feeling of home and hominess. She envisioned rooms out of wood and painted in various colours. Was she talking about the way Swiss mountain pine smells, about a crackling fire in the living room stove, about the special warmth of wood as a shell for the human body, the way she did recently? I don't recall exactly what she said but I still have the imp... More

CLTHouse is a modest single family house for a family of four in urban Seattle. Situated on a small, leftover 2,500 sf triangular lot, the house negotiates between an oversized alley and rear bank parking lot, and an established neighborhood near Lake Washington. The materiality of the house recalls ubiquitous small Pacific Northwest beach cabins, as well as specifics of the site: once a beach itself, under 9’ of water in 1916. The house explores the dialogue between a blackened wood exterior, opening up to a whitened cross-laminated-timber (CLT) interior left raw, lightly whitewashed. Washed in light, textures and smells of natural materials, and to be surrounded in green, the house requires a tiny, vertical central service core. Channel... More

The brief was to design a house for a single man, a house fitting like a tailored suit. He had acquired the building plot in the region where he was born after a nomadic professional life. We were given permission to place the house on another location on the site but could not exceed the volume of the existing farm house at the street side (850 m3) which we demolished. Since the client moved into the house some 4 years ago, he has become the father of two children and his library on the second floor has been re-thought as the children’s bedroom. The shape of the building is the consequence of an extensive geometric exercise by the architect, Ms. Marie-José Van Hee. Placing the house at the back of the terrain, she wanted to incorp... More

For several years, Bruketa&Žinic OM has occupied offices in a former toilet paper factory, but the space has never been fully adapted to accommodate the agency’s needs. This year, Brigada was invited to redesign and expand the agency’s office, transforming it into a modern, contemporary creative space that embodies agency values and encourages creativity. Due to the current economic situation, the office remodel required logical and cost-effective solutions to sumptuous ideas. The new office is divided into several different “areas” on three levels, each with its own distinct characteristics and atmosphere. These new, open workspaces are versatile and allow interaction among colleagues. Shared, open spaces encourage collaboratio... More