Contemporary conversions

The Prahran Hotel is a substantial two storey corner pub with a striking streamlined art deco facade. The rear of the venue had a poorly proportioned, internalised single storey extension and the clients brief for the project called to demolish and replace it with a dramatic double height space with a central courtyard. The use of large stacked concrete pipes for the street facade of the addition struck a chord for multiple reasons: they have a depth and can be interactive, they have a dramatic, sculptural quality, they reference existing internal circular motifs and they suggest stacked kegs or barrels. A steel glazed courtyard cuts through the interior, connecting both levels and allowing ample natural light to flood the space. A... More

This is a project instigated by Carl Turner Architects from the outset. We both designed and built this project. This process of as allowed us scope to experiment, learn and test ideas. The conversion of this once derelict Norfolk barn creates a series of spaces intended as part home, part meeting place, with the capacity to accommodate working, thinking and making. We have treated the existing building exterior as if it were listed, and inserted a new lining to the interior. Doors and windows have been set back to this line to emphasise the wall thickness and expose the beautiful bull nose brick details. The roof tiles have been re-claimed. The interior has been left open where possible, and we have treated the interior as a landscape; cel... More

A terraced house set within a Conservation Area in a quiet West London Street has been refurbished and extended by Manser Medal winning practice Pitman Tozer, creating a family home and garden annex. The original property has been stripped to its core and remodeled to create more generous floor plates suited to contemporary living. The design carefully stitches a contemporary three-storey extension on to the existing building and reorientates the property so that the occupants can enjoy the Southerly aspect of the house. A striking new timber clad annex in the rear garden enjoys independent access from the adjoining mews and provides surplus accommodation. The interplay between the house and the annex across the garden is an essential... More

Madrid’s Old Slaughterhouse is becoming an important Center for Contemporary Creation in Madrid, organizing architecture competitions that can give rise to proposals that will recover its 148 300 m2 to house creative processes, artistic training and participatory dialogue between the arts. The Reader’s House project is the result of a competition that took place in 2006, in which Ensamble Studio won the first prize. The purpose of the competition was to restore the warehouses 13, 14, 17b and 17c of the Old Slaughterhouse to incorporate a new educational program. The proposal made by Ensemble Studio maintains and enhances the original character of the industrial complex, by imposing a new order to the one of the pre-existent building... More

The aim was to act respecting the current volumes of this old house, located close to the river in the village of Noutigos. Maintaining the stone facade, replacing the original windows in chestnut wood, we just only propose two new small and strategic openings in the south wall for their views and the natural light needed for specific locations. The new openings with iron frame and fixed glass contrast with the existing ones and which are treated with a chestnut wood. Part of the south facade formed with very small stones has had to repair due to continuous moisture, so we propose a mortar render. We have maintained the large stones around the windows, and have continued to finish smoothing existing lines almost the entire first and seco... More

The magical lane houses, which were once the dominant fabric that made urban Shanghai the intoxicating place that it was in the 1930s, are now slowly being demolished, taken over by high-density developments all over the city. Neri &Hu was commissioned to reconstruct a dilapidated lane house left with almost nothing except its glorious shell in the historic and artistic Tianzifang area in Shanghai, and the mission was to transform it into three separate apartment units. Neri&Hu’s strategy was to rethink the typology of the lane house--keeping the split level formation, a typical trait to lane houses in this city, and add spatial interest through new insertions and skylights to accentuate the architectural integrity of such a typology,... More

On a fine Easter morning, our family set out on a daytrip and we found a stone island in the Baltic Sea with the ruins of a building. It was the Fish Factory pumping station, built in the1980s. Over 20 years since it was built, it has never been exploired. The monument of industrial architecture from the Soviet era was transformed into a vacation home for ourselves. Our vacation home was registered as Easter Island. The original Easter Island in the Pacific Ocean was also discovered at Easter and the images of the stone Moai are perforated in the sliding shutters of our home. HISTORY OF THE ISLAND, SITE PLAN The original drafts designed by collective farm Banga engineers in 1980 reveal an extremely ambitious plan. An island was built 2... More

Power House, Paul Archer Design’s refurbishment of a private house in Highbury North London, takes the modernisation of a typical London Victorian terraced house in a new direction with a highly sculptural timber clad rear extension. Located in close proximity to the entrance of Arsenal Football Club’s original stadium on Highbury Hill, the house was previously the home of the stadium’s grounds man. The front door of the house is painted in the signature red of the Gunner’s home kit as a nod to the house’s history. The focal point of the new house is a spacious double height kitchen/ diner at the rear of the property, which is created from the interplay of interlocking volumes made of frameless glass panels and linear timber panels.... More

Program: This project is located at Bergamot Station, an internationally known art center comprised of a series of industrial buildings converted into 45 art galleries including the recently opened Santa Monica Museum of Art. The program includes a ground level studio/gallery space with three artist live/work loft spaces above. The project completed construction in 1999 and was realized with a construction budget of $87/square foot. The fundamental challenge in this project was determining how to maintain continuity and coherence with the character of the existing industrial warehouse buildings at Bergamot Station without compromising formal and material experimentation and innovation. Thus, this project evolved as a carefully conside... More

This former ambulance garage in the centre of Rotterdam borders on a secluded park. Replacing the rear wall with a large glass window creates a direct relationship to it. The dugout in the middle of the building generates height for a second level. A polycarbonate lightbox with integrated LED lights houses the bedrooms and spans the space above the living-kitchen. Custom-made cupboard, kitchen and stairs finished in bright orange polyurethane, link the dugout to the entrance hall on the street side and the living room on the park side. Loose blocks on the staircase form informal chairs or function as tables. The suspended light box functions as a focal point in the movement from the front of the house to the garden. As one m... More

The house for a psychologist, a nurse and their young daughter is designed as the extension of an existing one-floor building in the historic center of Polignano a Mare. While the old tufo facade remains almost unmodified, the new volume above is clearly defined through the use of lighter materials: a double skin system - made of glass/aluminum large windows screened by steel and wood retractable panels - allows natural light in while preventing heating. About 4.000 movable wooden tiles create a pixelized reconfigurable front, and generate always changing shadows effects inside. The project aims to open a dialogue between old context and contemporary language, natural material and digital realm, while focusing on the importance of percept... More

PAD gained planning permission to refurbish and extend this substantial Arts & Crafts property in February 2010. Construction started four weeks later and was completed in January 2011. The existing building was sympathetically upgraded throughout and a dramatic new entrance wall contrasts with the original. A timber framed self-contained annexe was added to the rear and kitchen extended and opened out to the garden with full height sliding glass doors. What was once a dark internalised space is now flooded with natural light throughout the day. The boundaries between inside and outside have been broken down and the addition of new terrace spaces around the house enable the occupants to follow the sun path throughout the day. The interio... More

Friday April 5th 1946, on a beautifully clear Spring afternoon crowds cheered as the 25/1 racehorse, “Lovely Cottage”, strode triumphantly past the finishing post to be crowned winner of the Grand National, the UKs largest horse race. Trained by Tommy Rayson and ridden by Captain Robert Petre at the first true Aintree Grand National race since 1940, after the Second World War, and the last to take place on a Friday, which had been the tradition since 1876. That weekend “Lovely Cottage” returned home to the small village of Headbourne Worthy, near Winchester. He received a hero’s welcome before settling in for a well-earned rest in the stables at the Manor House where he was housed. These stables, that were once beautiful and functioni... More

“Renovation of old fencing rooms” is located in the old disarmament warehouse, a military construction from the middle of the eighteenth century inside the complex of the “Arsenal” which belongs to the historical memory of the city of Cartagena. The object of the project is the integration of the new CESADAR office (Supervision and analysis of the Navy data Center). The project is based on the recovery of the essential elements of the old rooms, like the space, structure, the original floorings as wood flooring, or brick paving... There are three essential actions, rescueing the old construction; recovering the original geometry, and providing the infrastructures for the new uses. More