Archinect - News

Las Rocas blends modular homes with Valle de Bravo’s rocky terrain

2024-12-06T15:52:00-05:00

In the northern part of Valle de Bravo, Mexico, known as La Peña, a complex of four houses seems to naturally rise from a mountainous, rocky landscape. Called Las Rocas, the project was designed in collaboration by architecture firm, Ignacio Urquiza Arquitectos, and interior design studio, Ana Paula De Alba.

Image: Onnis Luque

As detailed by the designers, the approximately 69,000-square-foot site was treated as an extension of the adjacent natural reserve. A detailed and accurate site analysis was required to determine where to position each of the houses for minimal impact on the surrounding environment.

Image: Onnis Luque

The complex is accessed through a narrow cobbled road, which leads to a central service area that contains a car park, storerooms, cisterns, machine rooms, and treatment plants. Users are required to leave their vehicles here and walk to the houses via paths, steps, and small plazas.

Image: Onnis Luque

The project is described as dynamic as each home features diffe...

Biodiverse natural pond swimming pools are gaining in popularity

2024-11-03T08:00:00-05:00

Unlike traditional swimming pools, which contain chlorine, natural pools rely on plants and rocks for filtration instead. An underwater retaining wall separates the swimming area (where humans — and sometimes fish — swim) from the regenerative zone, which closely resembles wetlands filled with aquatic plants like water lilies or water lotus. Pumps, and sometimes waterfalls, keep the water moving, and the rocks and skimmers filter sediment and large debris.

The alternative pools gained popularity in the UK before the trend was imported here. Costs range from between $50,000 to $200,000 to install and have the added bonus of self-winterization. One drawback might be the intrusion of some unwanted animal guests; however, the Times says: "Natural pools are considered lower maintenance, too, because owners don’t need to add chlorine once a week to the water. Other issues may arise, such as too much algae, but generally, it comes down to the plants, which can be thinned out."

Estudio Atemporal completes tranquil home in Mexico forest to capture ‘grandeur of a woodland setting’

2024-10-31T10:15:00-04:00

Mexico City-based Estudio Atemporal has completed a tranquil home in San Simón el Alto, Mexico. Named Casa Cono, the home was designed for a young couple seeking refuge from city life, merging living, working, and leisure within the forest environment.

Image credit: LGM Studio

The design of the scheme was driven by a desire to integrate the home seamlessly with its natural surroundings. Each tree on the site was preserved, “elevating these natural elements as central figures within the architectural narrative,” according to the team.

Image credit: LGM Studio

As users approach the site from the access path, the home is designed to appear as resting lightly on the land. Visitors walk through a scenic path before arriving at the house’s entrance at the rear, which reveals sweeping views described by the team as “akin to an expansive observation deck.”

Image credit: LGM Studio

The home consists of two rectangular volum...

Inside the new entertainment annex at Hollywood’s iconic Sheats-Goldstein Residence

2024-10-07T08:47:00-04:00

The latest addition to Hollywood’s famous Sheats-Goldstein Residence and Estate has been completed by Los Angeles-based firm Conner + Perry Architects. Named Club James, the new annex was originally envisioned by mid-century architect John Lautner and estate owner James Goldstein.

Image credit: Joe Fletcher Photography

The overall residence continues to be a draw for architecture lovers, serving as one of Los Angeles’ most famous mid-century homes and being featured in many films, television series, fashion locations, and music videos. The home began construction in 1962 as a collaboration between architect Lautner and the Sheats family, and later the current owner James Goldstein. Conner + Perry Architects has overseen the project since 2015.

Image credit: Joe Fletcher Photography

Club James is located adjacent to the original residence. Construction first started in the early 2000s, with the project expandin...

Dutch architects share details of Corbusier-inspired tiny apartment in Rotterdam

2024-09-11T14:48:00-04:00

A 74-square-foot apartment design in Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second-largest city, has captured attention for its innovative use of space, as featured on Archinect.

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode

The Cabanon, as its architect-owners Beatriz Ramo and Bernd Upmeyer prefer to call it, takes the 1951 vacation retreat Le Corbusier designed for himself in the Côte d'Azur as inspiration and includes a living room, sleeping pod, and tiny bathroom component with a small toilet, rain-shower, and spa.

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode

Each of these spaces comes color-coded, an effect that counteracts the apparent cramping quality of the space. A series of built-ins are another pivotal inclusion, affording them space to store items for their guests behind a tangerine-colored wall.

Image: © Ossip van Duivenbode

Ramo and Upmeyer acquired the upper floor residual space in the upper portion of their post-war apartment building in 2013. Upmeyer is the founder of BOARD (Bureau of Architecture, Research ...

Five rural contemporary homes by Koch Architects: Your Next Employer?

2024-09-09T10:20:00-04:00

Following our previous visit to New York-based Perkins Eastman, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series to California this week to explore the work of Koch Architects.

Founded by principal Joanne Koch in 1998, the Berkeley-based firm has developed a portfolio ranging from small interventions to larger residential projects. “We see the design process as an intimate, personal collaboration with our clients, and our role as guides, facilitators, and co-creators,” the firm says about its approach, adding that it is “dedicated to integrating intuition with experience, precedent with innovation, creative vision with practical constraints.”

Over on Archinect Jobs, the firm is currently seeking an Intermediate Designer to join its Berkeley office. For candidates interested in applying for the position or anybody interested in learning more about the firm’s output, we have rounded up four residential projects by Koch Architects that exemplify the firm’s ethos.

Sea Ranch Forest Retre...

ICON's first 3D printed CODEX homes come to market in Texas

2024-07-16T11:24:00-04:00

The first eight 3D printed homes from construction tech company ICON’s new CODEX architectural catalog are coming to Wimberley, Texas, as part of an initial release intended for the Austin area market.

The single-story homes, currently under construction, belong to the TexNext and AlphaBeta collections and range from four to five bedrooms and 2,800 to 4,000 square feet, featuring a mix of luxury and sensibilities to the state's unique history and architectural heritage.

ALPHABETA S. Image: courtesy of ICON

Residences from the TexNext line are designed in partnership with Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). According to the company, each of the homes included in the new release is designed to optimize thermal performance and energy efficiency, rating between 45 and 60% more efficient than typical homes of their size in the latter category.

RANCH MESA. Image courtesy ICON

These will feature ICON's proprietary CarbonX concrete, which, when paired with the company's 3D printed wall system and robot...

SO – IL shares facade details of forthcoming Nine Chapel residences in Brooklyn

2024-05-28T15:37:00-04:00

SO – IL’s next NYC residential project is wrapping up for client Tankhouse. Their design for the 14-story, 53,820-square-foot Nine Chapel residences features a perforated metallic facade system that reflects both seasons and the sun’s position while creating a permeable veil for the loggias and front porch entrances for each home on Chapel Street in Downtown Brooklyn.

Image credit: Jonathan Hokklo

“The drama of the building’s exterior is apparent even from far away. The opportunity here was less about how we fit into an existing fabric, and more about how we define this little spot in the city,” Tankhouse’s co-founder Sam Alison-Mayne says of the design.

Image credit: Valeria Flores

“The undulated metal facade is designed, configured, and textured to allow for different experiences, depending on from which angle it’s viewed, and the time of day. When walking behind it, you can feel the air coming through. If you see it from the street, it reflects in various ways — all thanks to the q...

On the comparative difficulty of family-sized apartment dwellings in North America

2024-05-24T12:04:00-04:00

One major consequence of this difference in design is that the North American double-loaded corridor buildings are much worse at providing family-sized units. To illustrate the point, we’ll go through the different sized apartments one by one, and compare the floor area and design. You’ll notice that the American plans have significantly more floor area for the same number of bedrooms, and have much more lightless interior space up against the common corridor to fill.

Stephen Smith is a former journalist and the Executive Director of the Brooklyn-based Center for Building in North America. His analysis of spatial challenges created by multifamily apartments and zoning conditions was featured recently in Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. This is an adroit relaying of an issue affecting both developers and architects in pertaining markets and compliments an earlier 2021 report on post-pandemic trends in multifamily residential design from the website Propmodo.

Smith writes: "The merits of North American building and zoning codes can be debated, but the effect is clearly that apartments, in order to provide the same number of bedrooms and give everyone a window, must necessarily consume far more floor area than point access block designs possible in other countries. So if you’re looking for a family-sized apartment in the U.S. or Canada and finding that new buildings don’t have what you’re looking for, it’s not you, it’s not the architect, and it’s not ...

Hotels surmount offices for residential conversion projects for the first time

2024-05-13T13:43:00-04:00

The balance of power in the market for residential conversion projects in the United States has shifted from offices to hotels for the first time, according to new statistics included in RentCafe’s latest market snapshot report for 2023.

Per their analysis of Yardi Matrix data, 4,556 of the 12,700 new apartments that were converted in 2023 were hotels. Office buildings were only slightly behind, with 3,587 converted units, representing 28% of the overall total. New York City led all markets with 733 conversions, followed by Albuquerque and Richmond, Virginia. A total of 151,000 conversion projects are in the pipeline currently across all 50 states, with a 17.6% increase being recorded year-over-year. The number of hotels being converted was up another 38.8% over the previous year.

Frida Escobedo reveals first American residential design in Brooklyn

2024-04-04T15:16:00-04:00

Frida Escobedo’s first American residential commission has been revealed as a block-scale condominium project in the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn.

The designer of the new Modern and Contemporary Art Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (in which she has set up a working studio) will deliver the new Bergen development at 209,000 square feet for client Avdoo & Partners by 2025.

It will stand as the second building project in the New York market for Escobedo following her collaboration with Handel on the new National Black Theatre mixed-use development in Harlem.

Image credit: DARCSTUDIO

Escobedo had gained notoriety in Mexico for residential projects, including Mar Tirreno 86, which will now inform her latest design, calling for 105 units configurable in 53 different types and ranging from studios to five bedrooms. The facade of the building is angled such that it maximizes natural light from an east-west direction, with porous openings made along the street level to produc...

Sam Lubell on what's new at Lautner's Sheats-Goldstein House

2024-03-27T17:04:00-04:00

Goldstein and his team of architects, builders, engineers and landscape designers have been working on the Lautner house addition since 2003, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Goldstein’s property, which he has been tinkering with for more than 50 years. [...] “The purpose of all of this was to make the inside feel like it was outside,” said Goldstein, who describes a very collaborative working relationship with Lautner until the architect’s death, at 83, in 1994.

Sam Lubell examines half a century of renovations of and recent additions to James Goldstein's compound surrounding the famed John Lautner-designed Sheats-Goldstein Residence in Los Angeles.

Big kudos to the Times for referencing Lautner’s 1960 (now-demolished) Concannon House with a link to our 2012 feature story "Lautner's Concannon Residence, from Dust to Dust" by Archinect senior contributing writer Orhan Ayyüce.

Zaha Hadid Architects will refurbish Le Schuylkill Tower in Monaco

2024-03-12T12:15:00-04:00

The next new project from Zaha Hadid Architects will renovate major elements of the historic Le Schuylkill Tower in Monaco.

Built as the principality’s first high-rise in 1963, the aging 25-story residential tower overlooks the Mediterranean and Monte Carlo’s Port Hercule and boasts 188 apartment units in its present layout.

Image courtesy MIR

Joined by Square Architecte, ZHA will embark on a renovation that will result in a brand new 441,320-square-foot space in May of 2027. The operation will add six total penthouses made from low-carbon (XCarb) steel to the three uppermost floors while reconfiguring the interior and balconies without any alteration to the building footprint, as well as reducing whole-life carbon emissions through a BD2M accreditated design.

Image render courtesy Talcik Demovicova

Other environmental considerations include grey and rainwater recycling, improving the building’s envelope performance, and an on-site waste management system.

The new building will also...

StudioAC plays with gabled forms for an ‘unapologetically contemporary’ Toronto home

2024-01-05T13:20:00-05:00

Toronto-based Studio AC has offered a look inside their “unapologetically” residential scheme in the Canadian city. The three-story home reads as a series of stacked boxes from the outside with echoes of traditional residential forms.

Image credit: Doublespace Photography

At the base of the scheme, an otherwise contemporary rectilinear massing holds a gable-shaped opening while, above, the scheme is crowned by a gabled roof form. Inside, the emphasis on gabled forms continued with ceiling levels on the first and third floors that follow a peaked, sloping form.

Image credit: Doublespace Photography

“While a gabled roof is one of the quintessential icons of “house”, the Studio was interested in elevating this phenomenon beyond motif to a spatial experience that defined a narrative throughout the project,” the design team explains. “This approach was integral to working with the client's budget strategy and thesis:...

Minimalist concrete apartments fill a narrow site in Tokyo, designed by Ryuichi Sasaki Architecture

2024-01-05T12:30:00-05:00

Tokyo-based Ryuichi Sasaki Architecture has completed a residential scheme in the western part of the Japanese capital defined by an exposed concrete structure on a constrained site. According to the designers, the three-unit scheme “emphasizes maximal utilization of natural energy and pursues comfortable livability.”

Image credit: BAUHAUS NEO

Designed in collaboration with Kiz Architects and Hidetaka Gonai/Escenario, and completed in the winter of 2022, the project measures only 15 feet wide and 46 feet deep. Responding to the site’s narrow constraints, the scheme sees a single staircase linking four levels, “utilizing the space efficiently to ensure ample living areas.”

Image credit: BAUHAUS NEO

Image credit: Sherpa

The staircase is visually integrated into the living spaces, serving as both functional steps and display storage. In addition, the top floor incorporates a workspace counter atop the staircase to facilitate remote working for residents. Elsewhere...

Ronald Lu & Partners completes Hong Kong tower offering ‘nature on every doorstep’

2023-12-28T12:34:00-05:00

Hong Kong-based Ronald Lu & Partners has completed a residential development in Kowloon described as a “real forest building.” Named Garden Crescent, the scheme was designed with the philosophy of “nature on every doorstep.”

Image credit: Ronald Lu & Partners

Externally, the building features slanted structural supports to create solid and void spaces that are designed to create multiple avenues for natural ventilation and passive cooling. On the podium level, the scheme’s biophilic elements include a landscape of trees, shrubs, and plants aimed at improving air quality, reducing the urban heat island effect, and enhancing the local microclimate.

Image credit: Ronald Lu & Partners

As the tower rises, voids in the form create six multi-layered green courtyards. Designed to be fully accessible to birds and insects in an effort to repopulate the area’s biodiversity, the courtyards are also intended to give residents imme...

Omer Arbel balances nature and form in this award-winning Canadian Pacific Northwest house

2023-12-01T18:42:00-05:00

Vancouver-based Omer Arbel Office (OAO) has completed work on their award-winning project 75.9, a new construction of a private home located adjacent to a hayfield in rural British Columbia.

The design scheme won in the 'Future Project House' category at the 2019 World Architecture Festival.

Image courtesy Omer Arbel Office (OAO)

The complex was completed this year at an undisclosed cost and features a monumental column resembling a lily pad, produced via a proprietary concrete pouring method. A demonstration column had to be constructed on the site in order to get the clients' final approval. The result is an aesthetically pleasing four-volume arrangement recovered by the landscape that blends process and material into a singular modern and bucolic harmony.

Image courtesy Omer Arbel Office (OAO)

“For 15 years, we’ve developed a method of working with materials at the scale of an object,” Arbel says of his...

SCI-Arc founder Ray Kappe's final residential design hits the market for $4.2M in Los Angeles

2023-11-29T18:24:00-05:00

Late SCI-Arc founding director Ray Kappe’s final residential design has hit the market in Venice Beach, California, for a listed price of $4.2 million.

The 2,482-square-foot home has three bedrooms and was originally built in 1947. Kappe began the commission in 2019 (the same year he passed away), designing for the owner a two-story addition that added a garage and small recreation room to the property at 938 Amoroso Place. The renovation was completed earlier this year at an undisclosed cost. Tracey Becker of COMPASS is the listing’s agent.

Image courtesy Realtor.com

“When he came to look at the property, he was impressed with the concept of the tree fern garden and how to incorporate the house within that context,” the anonymous seller told Realtor.com. “Ray was also interested in designing a home that went beyond the normal postage-stamp-sized lot home, by continuing his signature style of getting lost in a space — where everywhere you looked, an importan...

Multistudio begins work on special infill housing project designed with the help of local schoolchildren

2023-08-31T12:12:00-04:00

Multistudio has broken ground on a noteworthy new four-residence supportive housing project in Lawrence, Kansas, which they say is evocative of their goal of pushing the limits of what’s possible within their community and the industry as a whole.

The project involved collaborating with clients of the nonprofit Tenants to Homeowners and two classes of local elementary school students from the Limestone Community School who sourced materials for the construction with help from the Parsons School of Design.

Image: © Multistudio

The project was enacted to create infill housing on a lot connected to an adjacent bike loop. The first home design features two bedrooms and an open-concept kitchen and living area in addition to a covered patio and bathroom that can be used as an emergency shelter in the event of a tornado. A solution involving a pair of donated solar panels that helped to make the home’s functioning all-electric is likely to be enacted later. Further donations to the project...

Kate Wagner says McMansions have become a permanent staple of the American scene

2023-05-17T19:50:00-04:00

I started the blog McMansion Hell to document—and deride—the endless cosmetic variations of this uniquely American form of architectural blight. [...] I worry that I’ve actually reinforced the idea that McMansions are a relic of the recent past. In fact, there remains a certain allure to these seemingly soulless suburban developments [...] the McMansion is alive and well. Far from being a boom time fad, it has become a durable emblem of our American way of life.

Wagner says that, without noticing, the media’s focus on gentrification and the affordability of cities has meant that the rise of “modern farmhouses” and other forms of McMansions following the end of the great recession has gone largely unscrutinized. She claims these and other designs occupy a place between high design and vernacular architecture before finally predicting their continued dominance over the residential market owing to our penchant for consumerist displays.

"One day the McMansion, once a token of financial tomfoolery, will instead epitomize our nihilistic, environmental death drive," she writes in The Baffler. "More than half a century of urban planning prioritizing sprawl has gotten us to where we are now: choked by endless freeways, benumbed by carbon-copy strip malls, secluded in catchpenny houses with no sense of human scale."

Kim Kardashian and Tadao Ando meet on Palm Springs dream home design

2023-04-07T16:38:00-04:00

Apparent Japanese architecture aficionado Kim Kardashian recently traveled to the country to meet with Pritzker winner Tadao Ando, according to an Instagram post made by the celebrity mogul Thursday.

Ando is designing a private residence for Kardashian in the Palm Springs area, the details of which were first uncovered by Vogue magazine last year. In her post, Kardashian implied its construction was set to break ground soon, though she was sparse on other design details aside from sharing what appears to be a rendering of a grey cast concrete structure that more closely resembles a contemporary art museum than a home.

Ando has designed several celebrity residences over the years, including a $75 million compound for fashion designer Tom Ford and the Malibu home currently owned by Kardashian’s troubled ex-husband following a $57.3 million post-divorce splurge. Kardashian is also reportedly in talks with Kengo Kuma for another vacation residence at an undisclosed American lakeside loc...

Appels Architekten designs prefabricated wooden home in Bavaria

2023-03-28T14:49:00-04:00

Zurich-based firm Appels Architekten has designed an open, simplistic family home in Bavaria, Germany, composed of wooden cubes.

Called “House by the Lake,” the home balances privacy and spaces for gathering. As detailed by the architects, this configuration allows residents to retreat or participate in communal living at any time.

All of the private rooms are housed within a sculpture of wooden volumes. Ample open space is made available both horizontally and vertically, drawing light into the house and offering views into the garden and surrounding environment. These features are maximized through the house’s generous ceiling height, light interiors, and expansive windows.

The NYT asks: In a housing crisis, is building ‘bland’ better than the alternative?

2023-01-23T18:34:00-05:00

The new developments look startlingly alike, often in the form of boxy, mid-rise buildings with a ground-floor retail space, sans-serif fonts and vivid slabs of bright paneling. The bulky design is conspicuous, jutting out of downtown streets and overpowering its surroundings. Over time, it attracts a certain ecosystem — the craft breweries, the boutique coffee shops, the out-of-town young professionals. It’s anytown architecture, and it’s hard to know where you are from one city to the next.

The disappearance of America’s vernacular architecture and subsequent rise of what some call developer modernism is the product of necessity, reluctance towards artistry, and the monopolization of residential development across the country, according to the Times’ real estate reporter Anna Kodé.

The question of the kinds of structures (especially outside of large cities) they are replacing, if at all, is a potential counterargument in favor of their ubiquity. The larger question of whether drabness is a permanent condition of contemporary architecture, however, remains unanswered.

In a postscript with the Times’ Insider section, Kodé added: “I think one of the surprising things that came out of this story for me was finding out the number of people who defend these building types. I thought I would have to scrounge for those kinds of people. But a lot of people dee...

BIG and Safdie complete jagged new tower additions to Quito's skyline

2022-12-07T05:00:00-05:00

A pair of landmark projects in the Ecuadorian capital of Quito is now complete, representing firsts for both BIG and Safdie Architects, respectively.

QORNER, the 24-story Safdie-designed tower, is the firm’s first residential project on the continent and serves as an extension of its founder’s indoor-outdoor vision with garden terrace-lined residential offerings from the micro-apartment to the penthouse level.

IQON (left) and QORNER (right). Image courtesy of Uribe Schwarzkopf.

QORNER. Image courtesy of Uribe Schwarzkopf.

Its northern facade features a living green wall that defines a vertical core, while the staggering of its eastern and western facades creates a “hillside” form resembling a “cliff face” with room for double-height corner terraces with views of neighboring La Carolina Park.

QORNER. Image courtesy of Uribe Schwarzkopf.

Finally, a tree-lined infinity pool is placed on the rooftop level in a nod to their iconic Marina Bay Sand...

Hempcrete has been added to the U.S. building code appendix

2022-12-05T15:22:00-05:00

For many years, industrial hemp was illegal in the US due to hemp’s association with drug use, despite the fact that it does not contain more than 0.3 percent THC [...] Building residential homes with hempcrete was therefore effectively outlawed until 2018, when the Farm Bill distinguished between hemp and cannabis plants. Then, in September 2022, hemp building materials were added to the model US residential building code, paving the way for legal use in 2024.

The International Residential Code (IRC) accepted a modified appendix in September that some are hopeful could be a catalyst for further adaptation throughout the building industry. Builders for Climate Action spokesman Chris Magwood says its greatest potential lies in commercial construction, though applications within residential design do present inherent challenges owing to drying times, insulation R-Values, and other factors.

Previously on Archinect: Hemp is about to take an outsized role in the building industry's push to go green

"I don't think that hempcrete will ever play a large role in the residential market," Magwood recently explained to Treehugger. "The fact that it is a composite material that uses a lime-based binder means that it is less insulative than other options and more expensive. Somebody has to mix, form, and cure the material, whether that happens on-site or in pre-fab units or blocks. To meet basic minimum code requirements in colder climates requires at l...

The UK's new Part O regulations are being implemented at the right time

2022-07-25T09:00:00-04:00

New regulations, called Part O, took effect in England in June, requiring that new homes are built with some measures to combat overheating. The regulations aim to reduce solar gain — the increase in room temperature caused by sunlight — ensuring the safety of occupants, even if it may remain uncomfortable.

Hundreds of UK residents died in this week’s “heat apocalypse” that posed particular challenges to those living in the country’s many recently-converted office buildings and council housing. Brick masonry remains the predominant residential construction material, though Low Energy Architectural Practice Principal Mark Siddall says the regulations will “help designers, architects and engineers make more informed decisions so that the risk of overheating can be reduced in new properties.”

Extreme summer temperatures seen this week are expected to occur more regularly by century's end. At the other end of the spectrum, certain antiquated home designs can’t be kept warm enough in winter, prompting RIBA to call for an expansive £38 billion ($51.5 billion) upgrade plan.

Eric Owen Moss reveals his corner-bending A+M private residence in the Pacific Palisades

2022-07-05T19:31:00-04:00

Eric Owen Moss has shared photos of his self-designed private residence overlooking the coastline on a small 30’ by 50’ plot in Los Angeles’ beach-adjacent Pacific Palisades neighborhood.

The former SCI-Arc Director’s new A+M home is inspired by the Case Study homes published by John Entenza in Arts & Architecture magazine from the mid-1940s through the early-60s and the later direction of Barbara Goldstein, who featured Moss’ early Petal House renovation in that same publication’s pages in 1983.

Image courtesy Eric Owen Moss Architects

Per the architect, the four-story, 1,950-square-foot house is "organized around a central sky-lit atrium that makes the transformation in shape visible on the west side and provides floor-to-ceiling glazing as one makes their way up the stairs on the east side."

Image courtesy Eric Owen Moss Architects

"The perimeter walls of the building are in continuous transformation between the two plan shapes — the roof li...

Future Firm's Hem House has all the makings of an award winner at half the price

2022-02-11T14:34:00-05:00

As part of the firm’s desire to fill the “middle market” of residential housing options with inspiring contemporary architecture, Chicago-based practice Future Firm has designed a new 1,300-square-foot residential project, called Hem House, that has provided the city with a sustainable model for building the bedrock of successful mixed-income communities.

The design team worked with real estate developer Jacob Root to create the project with the hopes of diversifying the housing stock available to those interested in the area where new residential construction costs usually begin at $600,000.

Image copyright Daniel Kelleghan Photography

“While there’s a very vibrant art and culture scene in Chicago, there isn’t a lot of bespoke contemporary architecture, and what exists in residential is almost exclusively very high end — so we’re hoping to help change that narrative,” co-principal Ann Lui explained. “Because Chicago residential lots are all the same size, it’s easy for people to r...

Bosnian man builds rotating house to give his wife diversified views

2021-10-15T13:50:00-04:00

To appease his wife wanting more diversified views from their home, 72-year-old Vojin Kusic designed and built a fully operational rotating house.

The unique project was born through the couple’s former home, which Kusic routinely remodeled to meet wife Ljubica’s desires. After altering the home so that the family’s bedrooms faced the sun, Kusic says his wife grew frustrated at not being able to see people entering the front yard, which faced away from the road because of the previous remodel.

As reported by Associated Press News, Kusic said, “I had to tear down the wall between our two bedrooms to turn them into a living room and move all (electrical) installations. It was a very demanding task, it took a lot from me, but I did what she wanted.”

With more desired remodeling, Kusic decided to build an entirely new house that could adapt to Ljubica’s needs.

“Once again, this time on the ground floor, I had to start tearing down some walls, at which point, to not wait for her to ch...

22 projects shortlisted for the Don't Move, Improve 2021 awards

2021-05-21T18:49:00-04:00

The Don't Move, Improve Awards is an annual program organized by New London Architecture highlighting the city's best new home extensions and celebrate innovative home improvement projects. In its eleventh year, each selected winner demonstrates "how a well-designed home can improve quality of life, offer functional solutions on the smallest of sites, and create beautiful spaces even within the most restricted of budgets."

Below are this year's shortlist winners and a selection of project images.

A Cloistered House by Turner Architects. Image courtesy of NLA

A CLOISTERED HOUSE by TURNER ARCHITECTS
AMOTT ROAD by ALEXANDER OWEN ARCHITECTURE
CLAIRE AND TOM'S HOME by ZMINKOWSKA DE BOISE ARCHITECTS
COUNCIL HOUSE RENOVATION by VATRAA
ELMFIELD ROAD by ECKFORD CHONG

Elmfield Road by Eckford Chong. Image courtesy of NLA

ER Residence by Studio Hallett Ike. Image courtesy of NLA

ER RESIDENCE by STUDIO HALLETT IKE
FRUIT BOX by NIMTIM ARCHITECTS
GRAIN HOUSE by HAYHURST AND CO

Grain House by Hayhurst and Co...