Inside outside

Design and materials in Architecture always evolve althrough the passage of time but are still rooted from the  context of the place. Re-embrace elements and principles of houses in Nusantara. Nusantara in English means Archipelago, but the term itself was to draw the islands across from Sumatra to Papua. Built by the reaction of the tropical climate in Nusantara, the roof typically becomes the dominant element for a house. Celvin Leowardi The roof is the dominant shelter element of the house. The solid plates slit open and change into the transparent plate from tempered glass to get enough sunlight through the window. Filtered by the grid lines create a patterned shadow that adds another texture to the exterior wall.  Eave... More

This is an allotment on a gentle slope covered by evergreen oak, elm, ash, acacia, prunus and plane trees, all seeded spontaneously by birds from the surrounding plots. All of these trees and their canopy perimeters were measured and drawn on to plan. Le Corbusier said he wanted the empty La Tourette courtyard to be populated naturally with vegetation, by birds and the wind. Le Corbusier left a void in his architecture to be populated by nature. We think this project has arisen in opposition to that idea. Nature has left us a gap and here, only here, can we populate it with something that is architecture, because it is rational. We agree with la Tourette, however, that neither camouflage nor integration nor what is called “ organic... More

House like a single Tree House standing within a residential district in central Tokyo. To dwell in a house, amongst the dense urbanity of small houses and structures can be associated to living within a tree. Tree has many branches, all being a setting for a place, and a source of activities of diverse scales. The intriguing point of a tree is that these places are not hermetically isolated but are connected to one another in its unique relativity. To hear one's voice from across and above, hopping over to another branch, a discussion taking place across branches by members from separate branches. These are some of the moments of richness encountered through such spatially dense living. By stratifying floor plates almost furni... More

In the concept for this small house in the vicinity of Aldeia de Juso, the tiniest area of flat land and the house’s, as well as the high density of the new houses yet to be built in the surroundings, forcibly draw us to some sort of “obsession” about the possibilities of dilating space. Underlying this question, the importance of “expanding” the outdoor space becomes a particular central aspect, since it is also a building integrated in a semi-rural area, where people go looking for the experience of inhabiting garden or open yard spaces. Bearing in mind that by now the question of “limits” and “precincts” has become a common-place, they appear here as being of utmost relevance. We propose, after all, to solve and clarify the qu... More

The house positions itself in Okayama Prefecture near Seto Inland Sea. The site is located on a terraced mountain hill that was developed as a residential land. The family is consisted of a married couple and a child. We considered a new way of architecture on the site condition, where views are open towards the north and the ground level is one meter higher than the road level. The relationship is as if the site’s natural environment and the architecture coexist at the same time. The architecture has become a part of the whole landscape of undivided environment, not simply thinking about connection to the surroundings from the cut off opening in walls. This time, we came up with a living form that accepts the outside environment such as... More

The house is located on a large estate located in Comporta, Portugal. The site is completely clear, defined only by sandy soil, with spontaneous undergrowth vegetation and heavily punctuated by the vertical lines of countless pines.   Against this backdrop, the main objective of architect Rui Pinto Gonçalves, from RRJ Arquitectos, was to design a piece that would fit perfectly into the site. To register the landscape in a gesture, without highlighting it. Merging the architectural object with the profile of the existing nature. FG + SG – Fernando Guerra + Sérgio Guerra – Fotografia de arquitectura Following these premises, the conceptual process resulted in the composition of two volumes, interconnecte... More

Located on a plain in the Algarve, in the Sotavento region, the house occupies an introspective plot which doesn’t see beyond its own limits. In a position of maximum centrality a regular platform is constructed which is square and twenty metres wide. This platform is the location of the house. On top of the platform, a single brick wall spreads itself out and draws a new limit defining, in an instant, the internal and external spaces. The external areas are patios, differing in orientation, but all covered with a shade structure of cane, capable of ensuring delicate levels of coolness. In the interior, pink painted wood cupboards divide the spaces of the house, hierarchically between public and private areas. The concrete cei... More

This work is the result of a process that began in 2004 with the construction of a summer house in the forest of Mar Azul in order to take advantage of this intervention opportunity in a site of significant landscape values to propose design alternatives that take under consideration the protection of the natural environment as an unavoidable premise. The answer was an architecture proposal of minimums resources in the materials and in form, not only as an aesthetic solution but as an ethical principle of recovery the rational use of the different resources available. This stripped-back architecture should be incorporated to the landscape, seeking to be part of the environment that already exists. Thus, it was decided that an outer sk... More

Located just several hundred meters from Victoria’s wild and rugged coastline, the client’s brief for this project emphasised the desire for an informal seaside retreat - as comfortable to use by one person as it would be by ten. Distinct private and communal areas were also of key importance, along with a desire for the communal areas to open-out to the exterior, breaking-down the threshold between inside and outside spaces. Designed as a split level, single dwelling on an approximately square (2150 m2) block of land, the peninsula house consists of a private master bedroom and ensuite plus two large bedrooms which share a central bathroom. One combined open plan living, dining and kitchen area opens out towards large north and wes... More

It takes 40 minutes by ferry from the nearest island with an airport to reach Iriomote-Island, which is a part of Okinawa in the south of Japan. With an area of over 90% covered by subtropical virgin forest, the entire island is designated as a national park. The client had lived on Iriomote-Island for 14 years. Now he wanted to build his own house. While sitting snug against a hill, at the front of the house a luxorious vision opens up overlooking the farmlands that spread around the site. The necessary rooms included the living and dining room, a parent‘s bedroom, kitchen, toilet, a bathroom and a storage room that would be large enough for farming tools. The bedroom has two doors so that a separate children‘s room can be create... More

This alterations and additions project addresses a briefing requirement of providing space for a young growing family with 3 children under the age of 10. The initial idea was to challenge the conventional ‘box on the back’ type addition with a sculptural form born of site restraints; such as the ResCode setbacks along the south boundary; the ideal internal programmatic arrangement, the desire to maintain as much back yard as possible and inspired by the rooftop topography of hips and valleys of the existing Edwardian house. Three kids bedrooms and a bathroom were placed cantilevering above the garden, above a large living space below. This programme was then wrapped in a seamless timber skin, covering roof, windows and walls. This idea... More

A House in a urban area parts of the desire to maximize the feeling of spaciousness. Two strategies are used. The principal is to release the largest possible in the middle of the site allowing you to enjoy a private space with a height and volume incalculable. It enhances the perimeter of contact with the outside housing, land and housing understood as a continuum. On the other hand uses the existing slope to the ravine next to illuminate the basement, which enables you to host the program. The building is developed along the southern and western boundaries of the parcel, which together with the elements of urbanization of the site, form a kind of atrium, whose diagonal flight to a distant vision of the Sierra Calderona.... More

La Encantada is a suburb of Lima, located next to the sea. The project consists of a permanent single family home located in a fenced compound, 656 feet from the seashore. Owing to its suburban character, the design of the house arises from the objective of finding the best relationship between the constructed volume and the interior garden of the property. A two-storey compact volume was devised containing a full program (social area, private area, washrooms, etc.), which is intersected by a plane with several angles. These architectural angles seek to connect the front garden of the house within the interior of the house in a two-way spatial path, both on the horizontal and vertical plane. Thus, the simplicity of the main volu... More

The design of the house is a dual response to the particular topography of the site and to the rural domestication techniques that in the past shaped the raw ‘Cycladic island’ landscape. In the past, dry-rubble stone walls domesticated the land for agricultural purposes and were the most prominent man-made interventions in the landscape. The walls retained earth and transformed a steep topography into a series of arable plateaus. Today, the Cycladic islands are being reshaped by a very different force: the demand for holiday homes. The design uses the precedent of earth-retaining stone walls to create an artificial landscape that is both rural and domestic in use. The site is a natural saddle where two slopes meet. In the Nor... More