Skylight

Three adjacently located apartments in a building of the 1950ies were turned into a 6000ft2 flat. The spacious, light-flooded rooms are connected through a central corridor, while the 1700ft2 living and dining area occupies the whole west part, giving view to the Madrid skyline on three sides. Two of the big openings have been converted in huge eye-catching panels of fixed glazing that impressively display the view on the city. Pablo Casares Walls and ceilings are painted all white, emphasizing the effect of changing lightbeams coming from six skylights. Floors and bathrooms are covered with sandstone. Pablo Casares Clear lines, light colours and well-shaped proportions create a neutral, timeless and elegant space to be brought... More

Located off the desert coast of Los Cabos, Casa Escondida is a project of multiplicities. Mediating between complex and competing demands imposed by climate, program, and neighborhood regulations, the design overlays strategies of disguise and duality to construct the concept of a house within a house. Roland Halbe Roland Halbe Roland Halbe The discreet exterior displays a compliant structure, conforming to the requisite roof type, limited apertures, and stone cladding stipulated by community guidelines, while inside, architectural freedoms of form and materiality unfold. Carved out of the house’s conceptual massing, a composition of voids creates a second, protected exterior space; a courtyard covered by skylights tha... More

William MacCollum   What first greets the visitor to this Santa Monica, CA house is the generous front setback and landscape design by Z Freedman Landscape Architecture. A lighted series of steps lead up around a soft bed of fescue grass, and mature sycamore tree, past a stand of saplings. John Fox   Black textured Basalt stone tile from Norstone USA frames the entrance. William MacCollum William MacCollum   This project was an opportunity for our client and Marc Whipple to enter into a true collaborative adventure. Julie Cantor had in mind for years a modern take on a NYC loft space with an open volume, skylights, and very little strict division between rooms. A friend thought that sounded like a hou... More

Dena villa project, actually built 20 years ago. It had a complicated and closed plan, the owner of which wanted to make fundamental changes and general reconstruction, due to the age of himself and his wife. We have followed two main goals for the improvement and reconstruction of this villa: 1-     Using the maximum natural light For using the maximum light, in order to create visual transparency and connecting the interior spaces to the yard, we increased the number and area of the windows. Also by using some skylights, where there was the possibility of construction, we illuminated the dark spaces.  2-     Integrating the separate spaces in order to create spatial flexibility while maintaining the character... More

The project entailed the development of a new Primary School, replacing the dilapidated Botha’s Halte farm school, in the Breede River Valley, for the Bosjes Trust. Although a privately sponsored project, the school is operated by the Western Cape Education Department. The new buildings provide a state-of-the-art facility for 250 rural primary school learners from a predominantly farm worker community. The buildings have been designed around sustainability principles, while respecting the cultural heritage of the area. A didactic design approach was followed, whereby these aspects are demonstrated throughout the complex as part of the teaching and educational processes.   The “Anna Zaal” (circa 1927), the first scho... More

The Bower Activities Center (BAC) introduces a light-filled hub of activity and care programs to the pastoral campus of Youth Villages in the city of Bartlett, an outlying suburb of Memphis, TN.  Youth Villages, “a nationally recognized leader in the field of childrens' mental and behavioral health,” provides residential, academic, and developmental services for children and teens with “emotional, mental, and behavioral problems.”  Initially designed to house only the Food With Class program –  an educational class where teens learn to develop teamwork and professional skills in a commercial kitchen setting – and a few other support services, the scope of the design quickly grew as Youth Vi... More

This project is one of six projects we have completed on one and the same road. It lies within the Driffield Road Conservation Area of Tower Hamlets in East London. The convoluted Victorian, terraced house required drastic re-shuffling of its functions in order to unlock and add additional space to this home of a family of five.    Driven by budget limitations we decided early on to keep the structural interventions to a minimum. Existing openings acted as a setting out points for the new spaces. Despite that we have managed to add an additional bedroom, a bathroom, a laundry drying room and a new dining area with a multi-functional lounge adjacent. The latter also meant that the existing dining room could be merged with the liv... More

A 25 years old town house, which went under a dramatic makeover. The house was very old fashioned and its interior design was very “busy” and cluttered. The new house owners wanted a fresh clean design to complement the complete renovation it needed. The first very significant change we agreed on was demolishing the walls surrounding the staircase, allowing the space of the entrance floor to become more continuous. That created a much airy, spacious and bright feeling to the whole public area. The built banister was replaced with minimalist metal railing and a string wall separating the kitchen and the stairs to the basement. The staircase itself was covered with parquet and the existing skylight was replaced with a more mod... More