Archinect - News

This modern, looping farmhouse seems to effortlessly grow from its natural surroundings

2024-09-29T08:00:00-04:00

The latest project by Polish firm Mobius Architekci is a contemporary farmhouse-style home, designed to have a harmonious relationship with its natural surroundings.

Image: Paweł Ulatowski

Taking the shape of a loop, in which the structure is seemingly both closed yet fluid, the home is aptly named the Loop House. It is situated on a large plot of land, appearing to naturally emerge from the landscape.

Image: Paweł Ulatowski

The main compositional axis is the nearby lake, which becomes a natural extension of the living space. The building’s form allows each of the rooms to open up to the surrounding environment through gentle folds.

Image: Paweł Ulatowski

Despite spanning over 8,600 square feet, the home appears to be very subtle and delicate. Looking from the street, the structure seems to disappear into the landscape. As one moves closer, the body of the building looks like it is levitating above the site. Its position above ground creat...

Eric Owen Moss’ first LA home relists for $10.95 million

2024-04-25T18:39:00-04:00

Eric Owen Moss’ first residential design in Los Angeles, the 1991 Constellation 167 home in Brentwood, has hit the market courtesy of Sotheby’s International Realty for a listed price of $10.95 million. The home had previously been listed by Compass and Sotheby’s for $12 million last fall before being put up again for the lower price, held exclusively by the latter.

Photo: Wayne Ford, image courtesy Sotheby's International Realty

The 5,476-square-foot design includes four bedrooms and 5 full baths and sits on just a quarter-acre parcel. It has appeared several times in various television shows (R.I.P. Curb Your Enthusiasm) and is distinctive of Moss’ warped style, which was later repeated in 2022’s A+M House. A “comprehensive” series of upgrades and restorations has been performed since it was commissioned, according to Robb Report.

Photo: Wayne Ford, image courtesy Sotheby's International Realty

Moss, who turns 81 this year, recently completed his (W)RAPPER office tower in Culver Ci...

Olson Kundig completes West Hollywood homes designed for ‘craft and material expression’

2024-03-05T11:09:00-05:00

Olson Kundig has completed a series of custom single-family homes in West Hollywood. Collectively named ‘The Houses at 8899 Beverly’ the eight homes seek to be “harmoniously linked yet individual” with architectural forms “combining natural materials such as wood, steel, glass, concrete, and stone.”

Concrete House. Image credit: Nils Timm

“These eight distinct contemporary homes are woven into the fabric of their vibrant West Hollywood neighborhood at the base of the Hollywood Hills,” said Kevin M. Kudo-King, co-Design Principal at Olson Kundig. “While each one has its own identity – just as the eclectic neighboring houses do – collectively, they are about craft and material expression.”

Bronze House. Image credit: Nils Timm

The homes form the final part of the wider 8899 Beverly developement which opened in 2022. The project centers on the Los Angeles International Design Center, a mid-century modernist build...

Coastal Nova Scotia home ‘emerges from rocky terrain,’ designed by Omar Gandhi Architects

2024-02-23T12:26:00-05:00

Omar Gandhi Architects has completed a house on Canada’s Atlantic coastline that “emerges from rocky terrain.” Named Rockbound, and located in Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia, the home was commissioned as a place of refuge for a busy client.

Image credit: Ema Peter Photography

Situated atop a rocky shoreline, the building was shaped to capture views of the ocean while sheltering the interior from winds and storms. A steel and wood frame was shaped to resist hurricane-force winds, while a material palette with naturally weathering characteristics is intended to “age gracefully” and “tell the story of its place in the landscape.”

Image credit: Ema Peter Photography

“The structure emerges from the rocky terrain, mirroring the coastline's contours, and its primary living spaces run parallel to the water, offering breathtaking panoramic views along the coast and across the bay to the iconic Peggy's Cove Lighthouse,” th...

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:...

StudioAC completes coastal Canadian home embedded into a steep ridge

2023-10-26T11:51:00-04:00

Toronto-based StudioAC has completed a residence east of the city, in a landscape characterized by an “intricate coastline and a bourgeoning wine-making industry.” The home, named Cherry Valley House, sits on a steep ridge that descends to the lakeshore.

Image credit: Felix Michaud

The house is sunken into the ridge, “protected at its back and providing a vantage point below the trees,” according to the team. Large windows on the shore-facing facade frame views of the lake, while panoramic windows at ground level face an adjacent meadow. Above, large dormer windows bring additional natural light into the space.

Image credit: Felix Michaud

The home’s contemporary spatial sequencing is contrasted by materiality drawing inspiration from the area’s agrarian architecture. Outside, brick and cedar “celebrate the duality of the site,” with brick used on the solid wall holding back the hillside, and a cedar roof wrapping down the facade fa...

This oceanside Nova Scotia home is designed as a ‘prototype for modest living’

2023-10-10T11:22:00-04:00

MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects has completed an oceanside home on Nova Scotia’s South Shore described as “a prototype for modest living.” The Chester House measures 1,350 square feet and was designed to be “culturally and economically appropriate to its setting.”

Image credit: James Brittain

Externally, the home features minimally detailed eaves, corners, and openings to “underscore and elevate the architectural simplicity.” In contrast to the wooden base, the upper story is clad in a weathered steel sleeve which “appears to slide over” the base. The top floor facade is surrounded by glass to create panoramic views of the forest, while small punch windows create vignettes of the landscape features.

Image credit: James Brittain

The ground floor contains two bedrooms and a staircase constructed of an origami-like folded perforated steel plate. The decision to place bedrooms on the ground floor was driven by a desire to create a sheltered, quiet environmen...

Gianni Botsford Architects raises the roof in London's Notting Hill

2018-11-02T19:23:00-04:00

Located in London's Notting Hill lies a contemporary residential home hidden within the back row of Victorian style villas. Gianni Botsford Architects used the limited space and urban landscape to their advantage when constructing House in a Garden. The 2659 square foot home, originally a dilapidated bungalow built in the 1960's features eye-catching structural details.

Aerial view Image © Gianni Botsford Architects

Due to limited space, the team at Gianni Botsford investigated the possible geometric forms that could be used to create this residential home. Cautious with its construction, the architectural team made it a point not to obstruct the surrounding areas whilst ensuring the home featured enough natural light and space. The decision became clear that to ensure the functional renovation of the home making space started below ground.

Ground floor side patio view Image © Edmund Sumner

On the ground floor the home's defining feature is its copper clad roof. Constructed out of g...

Lucasz Kos creates a mesmerizing villa in busy Shanghai

2018-10-15T20:44:00-04:00

Located in the busy city of Shanghai is a tranquil villa that transports you into a lucid state of living. Kos Architects in collaboration with Atelier Zerebecky, have recently completed construction of Cloud Villa. The blissfully serene three-story home exudes a peacefully private experience. Its grand central staircase, the centerpiece of the space, connects each section of the home. If that wasn't enough to create an almost etherial experience, the 8-meter high vaulted ceiling of the main living room adds to its heavenly interior.

As inhabitants of the home make their way through the various levels of the house, the abstract form of the staircase creates a seamless transition from the upper, middle, and lower levels. The light and airy interior focuses on a clean and contemporary aesthetic. Identifying as the architect of peace and quiet, Lukasz Kos' Cloud Villa, has achieved such a space.

Recently establis...

Charles Leadbeater on the meaning of home in today's culture of rootlessness

2016-12-09T15:20:00-05:00

The tiny house is just one example of the lengths to which people will go to create a sense of home even when they lack the means for it. It’s just one symptom of a much wider and intensifying search for belonging, which makes home as important to politics as the idea of class or rights – especially now, when so many people feel displaced, both literally and figuratively, by life in innovation-driven, high-tech, networked capitalism.

How Tadao Ando defines his own "home for the spirit"

2016-11-28T13:04:00-05:00

This should be Ando’s residence. But there is no bedroom. Or food in the kitchen. And a couple of years ago he told Japanese TV that he lives in a normal apartment. This is Tadao Ando’s house, but is it his home? [...] Ando built it to be his home in 1995 but never moved in. You can find it listed in architecture books as the “Atelier” or “Studio Annexe”. “I wanted a fun place to live, a place where every day is thrilling, a quiet place to think,” he says.

Ando, on the ultimate home, to Robin Harding for the Financial Times:

“Please write this,” he says. “A church is a home town for the spirit, a place where the spirit lives. Big or small. It’s the home of the spirit so when you go there you feel relief. You feel the spirit’s richness. I have to think whether I have made a home for the spirit or not. A house is the same. It must be a home for that person’s spirit."

More Ando on Archinect:

Apple's HomeKit turns the iPhone into a remote for your smart home

2014-06-02T14:53:00-04:00

With a feature called HomeKit that's coming in iOS 8, iPhones will be able to start controlling smart devices, such as garage door openers, lights, and security cameras. It'll all be controllable through Siri too [...] It's only a matter of time before major tech companies begin vying to be the thread that connects appliances and devices throughout your home, and this seems to be Apple's first step in the door.

In Residence: Fernando Romero - NOWNESS

2014-03-18T18:00:00-04:00

“To me, this house is the ultimate modernity dream come true,” says Fernando Romero of the two-story, mid-century gem he calls home. “It is extremely flexible for all types of activities: for family, for socializing, for living.” Designed in 1955 by homegrown architect Francisco Artigas, the house is located in the leafy suburbs of Mexico City, adjacent to one of largest city parks in the Western Hemisphere, Bosque de Chapultepec.

In Residence: Fernando Romero on Nowness.com

Homes of the starchitects recreated in Milan

2014-03-06T12:29:00-05:00

Curator Francesca Molteni filmed each architect's home, and interviewed them about their lives and careers. Working alongside fellow architect and set designer Davide Pizzigoni, Molteni has recreated the private residences of Hadid and co., “by means of real-life videos, images, sounds, comments and reconstructions. The result is an interactive exhibition space that unveils the architects’ visions of living, their choices and their obsessions.”

Selling the Dwelling: The Books That Built America's Houses, 1775-2000

2014-01-19T23:34:00-05:00

the show offers innumerable other examples of the housing industry’s braiding of mythic imagination and commercial calculation...It’s an epic, richly rewarding intellectual journey

Ken Johnson reviews the exhibition currently on view Grolier Club (running through February 7, 2014). The show explores how quintessential American traits are reflected within the pages of the builder’s guides, pattern books, catalogues, and other forms of architectural literature.

70's Vegas underground home on the market for $1.7M

2013-09-12T20:43:00-04:00

The above ground structure is just like any other– with the only hints being multiple air conditioning units, and emergency exits around the property. The underground interior is one that’s stuck in the hippy chic 1970′s days. Pink draperies, carpet and classic columns outfit the dated interior. Putting greens, a rock facade barbecue and natural style light settings make for an interesting setting that’s completely user controlled.

Tech professionals seek less flashy homes

2013-09-12T17:32:00-04:00

The owner of Hill House is Scott Croyle, senior vice president of design at HTC. At two bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and a study, the home is just large enough to share with his wife and son. Its modest scale allowed Bernstein to emphasize quality materials over quantity of space. "It's almost a negative value in that (tech) community," said Bernstein of over-the-top homes. "There's a real emphasis on not seeking a mansion right away."

Housing Market Index goes above 50 for the first time in seven years

2013-06-19T12:43:00-04:00

Builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes hit a significant milestone in June, surging eight points to a reading of 52 on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. Any reading over 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor.

A look into Thom Mayne's home

2012-12-06T14:12:00-05:00

Taut concrete skin, structural glass, an escalator with nothing to hide, everything kinetic, a roof that rocks and rolls. Thom Mayne has given us the most exciting building in Dallas. Plastic cuckoo clocks, his wife Blythe, his dog Isis, his socks, his shoes, his Pritzker prize, the garden, the cereal, the coffee, showers you can see through, columns that could roll. This is where he lives.

The NYT takes us on a tour of Henry Urbach's SF home

2012-11-01T13:50:00-04:00

Mr. Urbach, 49, until recently the curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and his spouse, Dr. Hartman, 52, a psychoanalyst, have approached the design of their home as if it were a conceptual art exhibit for two. The apartment’s many mirrors aren’t for checking for stray nose hairs. They “complicate spatial relationships,” Mr. Urbach says.

The cost of living in a "landmark status" Frank Lloyd Wright home

2012-10-26T14:13:00-04:00

Its owners are hoping to sell the house before Nov. 7, when the City Council is scheduled to vote on giving it landmark status, which they oppose. Though they agree that the house ought to be saved — “The property is gorgeous,” Mr. Sells said in its master bedroom one morning — they say they must first safeguard their investment, as well as their livelihood. “If it becomes a landmark,” Mr. Sells said, “we’re out of business.”

An Octogenarian’s Modernist Dream Comes to Life

2012-05-10T13:51:00-04:00

“Here is the most modern of modern houses I’ve ever seen and loved,” she wrote, describing the turquoise mosaic tile, the compact state-of-the-art kitchen, the distant views of city lights, the proximity to her daughter’s family and the circular stairway that she felt, sadly, too old to sail down. “I guess you can’t expect to have too many dreams answered,” she concluded. “At least, I’ve had the opportunity to see the Morris House, to know it existed.”

Artist Doug Aitken's Venice Beach Home

2012-04-03T20:13:00-04:00

The house is the world’s first temple to “Acid Modernism,” the aesthetic the California-born Aitken conceived for himself and Gemma Ponsa, his companion of the last six years. “The goal was to create a warm, organic modernism that’s also perceptual and hallucinatory,” he said of the design. “We thought that would be a wonderful environment to live in.”

'If Walls Could Talk': A History Of The Home

2012-03-14T12:49:00-04:00

The book answers questions like: Why did the flushing toilet take two centuries to catch on? Why were kitchens cut off from the rest of a home? And did strangers really share beds as recently as a century ago? (Yes, they did.)

For sale: futurologist JG Ballard's old home. In need of modernisation

2011-07-12T18:00:01-04:00

JG Ballard's rather drab semi-detached home in Shepperton is inextricably linked with the life of one of post-war fiction's greatest talents. Many of the country's best writers, often Ballard's disciples, visited the author during the 49 years that he lived in this sleepy suburb, where he crafted the dystopian thrillers Crash and Cocaine Nights.

Goff's Bavinger House collapses

2011-06-23T23:15:00-04:00

The architectural oddity either fell to a recent microburst of high winds in Norman, or at the hand of the owner.

Mystery surrounds the current condition of the work of an odd genius.

Home from Home opens in Lisbon

2011-05-02T19:11:16-04:00

Home from Home, a new installation by London-based Carl Turner Architects has now opened at MUDE (Museu do Design e da Moda), the Design and Fashion Museum of Lisbon.

Home from Home examines the design and details of a typical UK home. The installation is composed of five individual structures - each one representing different parts of the home - including the front room, the kitchen, the commode, the bed and the stair. Together these parts create a playfully abstract house, articulating ideas of British domesticity.

The installation is organised by the British Council as part of New Architects: Portugal-UK, the latest in a series of New Architects International Exchange programmes initiated by The Architecture Foundation.

Using materials sourced in the UK, such as lambswool insulation, Home from Home identifies advancements in the British approach to sustainability and efficiency in new housing. The installation challenges traditional house typologies and identi...

I honestly don’t think that I would have been an artist had I not lived in the house.

2011-04-12T22:17:36-04:00

"There’s not one bit of drywall or plasterboard or anything like that, so everything has a material that is itself."

Jen Graves interviews artist Leo Berk, who claims his childhood home, the Ruth Berk house by "not-quite-legitimate architect, in a good way, Bruce Goff", was the formative experience that made him become an artist.