Archinect - Features

And the Winner of the Hollywood Competition is...Ethos over Categorizable Style

2017-03-11T10:57:00-05:00

With juried first, second and third place winners, as well as an owner's choice winner, the Hollywood Competition has selected four different visions of a potential "house of the future" sited just beneath the Hollywood sign. Here's a closer look at each of the winning projects, and what those designs could portend for the next iteration of residential design.

dIONISO LAB's new home puts the outside at the center

2017-02-26T10:20:00-05:00

Located in a suburban area of Póvoa de Varzim, a coastal town in Portugal known unsurprisingly for its fish and beach resorts, sits a stark white home. Inserted into a gridded plot and enclosed by fragmented gardens and paved areas, House L27, stands apart from its neighbors. Designed by José Cadilhe of dIONISO LAB, the home plays with the standard geometry of the surrounding construction by offering a more fluid alternative in which the exterior becomes the central, organizing space.

Sustainable slate tiles dress this Danish family’s energy-efficient “Future House”

2016-12-19T15:24:00-05:00

In Scandinavian design, it’s the little things that count. When this Danish family wanted to design and build their own home, they wanted all the little things to add up to a balance of energy efficiency with light and atmosphere, cost with comfort, aesthetics with sustainability. All that would combine to create something that lasted, both functionally and aesthetically. The resulting “Future House” by Danish firm Novaform Arkitekterne gets the job done elegantly, harnessing a modest structure to diverse ends.

Behind the façade: WORKac's hidden penthouse, 3D-modelled capitals, and other subtle interventions in 'the Obsidian Building'

2016-11-11T13:42:00-05:00

In the latter half of the 19th century, areas of New York City, in particular SoHo, got a facelift courtesy of a major new technology: cast-iron. Cheap, sturdy, and easily to install, cast-iron façades were used to dress up older industrial buildings and attract new tenants. The material was pliable yet durable, and could be easily cast into ornate forms, which were often informed by classical Italian and French designs with an American twist. More than just an aesthetic embellishment, replacing the façade dramatically changed the experience of the interior, allowing for enlarged windows and higher ceilings.

Stripped of cosmetics, but imbued with substance: inside the Berard Residence

2016-08-26T09:20:00-04:00

As conceptually oriented housing design goes, the Berard Residence has a bold aim: it attempts to shift the preconception of housing's elemental function away from shelter and into a more experiential mode, concerned with the qualities of human existence itself. Submitted to our open call under July's theme of Domesticity, the home aligns itself with a new interpretation of the 'case study' ideal.

ELL House by Domaen maximizes 'remodeled' footprint with strategic hillside ordinance loophole

2016-08-16T09:25:00-04:00

The stone, wood, and stucco form of the ELL house in Los Angeles' Benedict Canyon is not the first structure to grace its site. Oddly enough, the previous structure helped to accelerate ELL’s building process: the architects were able to list their design as a remodeled residence for permitting purposes, thereby sneaking past the Baseline Hillside Ordinance's setback and building restrictions.

'Ethical Dwellings for Generation Y' explores new forms of living and owning in a changing London

2016-08-13T06:08:00-04:00

While an average of 100,000 people move to London each year, only about 25,000 new homes are built annually: a formula that has produced a critical lack in affordable housing. The median rent in the capital city is £1,400 and the average house price has passed £600,000. In other words, only the very rich can afford to live in London.

Glass and concrete tread lightly in DSDHA's London 'Covert House'

2016-07-28T09:20:00-04:00

What is domesticity in the 21st century? Is it a blend of the 19th century ideal of the sanctuary with the 21st century notion of greater transparency and connectivity?

SCI-Arc students step out of the studio to build an affordable, eco-friendly home with Habitat for Humanity

2016-07-25T09:56:00-04:00

It’s not that often that architecture students get to actually build a house while still in school. But a class of SCI-Arc students led by faculty member Darin Johnstone got to design and build a new home—and an affordable, eco-friendly one, at that.

Deciding how to bill clients is complicated. What are the basic fee structures behind residential projects?

2016-07-14T10:03:00-04:00

In the same way that no two designers have the exact same aesthetic sensibility, architectural billing is tailored to the demands of a specific project. Nonetheless, certain industry-wide guidelines do apply. Here, Archinect breaks down common architectural fee structures in the U.S. as they relate to residential construction projects.

If houses had airplane modes: an interview with Joseph Grima of Space Caviar

2016-06-07T08:27:00-04:00

“Should our homes have an airplane mode?” asks the Italian architecture studio Space Caviar, in the descriptive text for their RAM House, a fully-equipped smart home that alternatively doubles as a refuge from the ubiquitous technology of today.

Geotectura's ZeroHome turns waste into shelter

2016-03-22T09:09:00-04:00

ZeroHome, a project by the Tel Aviv-based studio Geotectura, is a house built entirely from waste – but you wouldn’t necessarily suspect it from looking at its sharp, angular form.

Completing Mies van der Rohe's Brick Country House

2015-08-07T13:42:00-04:00

There are small problems that vex as much as they intrigue us, whose answers only lead to larger questions.

Showcase: A’ House by Wiel Arets Architects

2015-01-05T22:58:00-05:00

Wedged between the narrow alleys and razor-sharp property lines of Tokyo's Nishi-Azabu neighborhood, A' House fits in its dense context like a shiny puzzle piece. Bold yet familiar, expansive yet compact, transparent yet opaque, open to dialogue yet impenetrable like an oyster shell.

Designed by Wiel Arets Architects, the building's innovative system of immense sliding windows responds to varying desires for privacy, air flow, light intake and participation in the neighborhood's social life.

Turns out, where Dutch and Japanese practicality intersect, one might discover concrete poetry.

Home is where the art is: Contemporary Artists and the Modern House

2014-11-26T15:18:00-05:00

Hosting new art in old homes can make for some strange bedfellows.

Showcase: Slate House by Affleck de la Riva architects

2014-11-06T20:27:00-05:00

Suburbia doesn't have to be faceless. Slate House, a proud black sheep in a family of tract houses, manages a demurely chic presence amid the former farmlands of Laval, Montreal's largest suburb.

Student Works: This house made of trash teaches a lesson in green housekeeping

2014-08-04T10:10:00-04:00

The Waste House at the University of Brighton's Faculty of Arts is stated to be the UK's first permanently built home made of over 85% discarded materials, including 20,000 toothbrushes, 2,000 carpet tiles, and 4,000 plastic DVD cases. But its focus on student involvement in realizing the house is also worth noting. The project leader, BBM Architects' Director and University of Brighton Senior Lecturer Duncan Baker-Brown, collaborated with a total of 253 undergraduate students, apprentices, and volunteers in the designing and constructing of the Waste House. As students experimented with new applications for these everyday materials, they also learned that it doesn't just have to end up in a landfill.

Show Case: ‘Schapenboeten’ Holiday Home by Benthem Crouwel Architects

2014-07-31T19:03:00-04:00

Slightly quirky, modest and covered in fishnets, Benthem Crouwel Architect’s holiday house turns a piece of Dutch vernacular into a sleek but cozy nest. Modeled after the local ‘schapenboeten’ sheds for storing hay and tools in a windy climate, the home is now part of the landscape on Texel island, a popular tourist destination in the Wandsee known for its fishing and unique sheep breed.

ShowCase: Concrete House by Studio Gil

2014-07-29T14:22:00-04:00

Studio Gil’s extension of a Victorian terraced house in East London works from the inside out. Situated in a conservation area in the Mile End neighborhood, "Concrete House" maintains its exterior cladding while opening up its interior to the outside, knitting together remodeled inner spaces and exterior views.

ShowCase: Fall House by Fougeron Architecture

2014-04-30T16:33:00-04:00

The California Coast is a dramatic fluctuation of cliffs, redwood trees and sand dunes, at once powerful and peaceful. California’s famous Pacific Coast Highway winds down the state, with alternating western views of ocean and forest, with little else visible from the narrow road. But draped over a precarious hillside on Big Sur’s south coast, Fougeron Architects’ Fall House is a frontier-cabin like no other, on the very edge of the country overlooking the Pacific.

ShowCase: Residence in Weinheim by Wannenmacher-Möller Architekten

2014-03-25T19:05:00-04:00

While designed as a private residence, the shape of Wannenmacher-Möller's Weinheim Residence has inklings of cultural and industrial institutions. The home's stretched linearity is a sleek version of the stacked shipping container aesthetic, made of aluminum and glass on the ground floor, and light-colored stone on the upper. Inside, surfaces are similarly light and clean, resembling a bright and airy white-cube gallery. Built for a family of five, the house morphs neatly from two stories into three, as the steep plot slopes downwards from the street-facing front into the back garden.

ShowCase: Casa H by Bojaus Arquitectura

2014-03-05T14:51:00-05:00

Bojaus Arquitectura’s Casa H is a modernist white cube, but it’s also not what you think it is. The cube is sometimes interpreted as a reflex towards neutrality, to get the spaces and the inhabitants within to speak for themselves. But Casa H isn’t arbitrarily a white cube; it’s the logically resulting form of rationalist, as well as aesthetic, concerns.

Student Works: FOUNDhouse by Patrick Beseda and Lacy Williams

2014-02-05T13:56:00-05:00

When Patrick Beseda and Lacy Williams began realizing their ambition to build a micro-dwelling, they began with a Wikihouse design. The WikiHouse project is an open-source library of construction sets for houses, where anyone can submit, edit, and use the designs. The design's components can all be "printed" from plywood using a CNC machine, and are simple enough to assemble with minimal training. Lacy and Patrick, both MArch students at the University of Colorado, Denver, set out to build their own micro-Wikihouse last summer, personalizing the template along their way.

ShowCase: House in Mosteirô by Arquitectos Matos

2013-09-04T15:39:00-04:00