The Poteet Loft Porch
San Antonio Texas – Poteet Architects Imagine a warm, balmy night, good friends, a glass of wine and a soft breeze as you enjoy the outdoors. Sounds wonderful until the bugs start joining the party. Here’s a very nice solution that adds a lot of usable space without breaking the bank account. Like decks, a […]
Rockhouse
British Columbia, Canada – Sandrin Leung Design Build Built area: 111.5 m2 (1,194 sq. ft.) Year built: 2009 – 2010 Photography: Ana Cristina Sandrin “The Rockhouse is a courtyard home organized around a large rock bluff in a gesture of embrace. From the first visit to the site we felt the very strong spiritual/natural presence of this rock. We […]
The Water Temple
Ljubljana, Slovenia – Kieran Donnellan Year built: 2012 Photography: Courtesy of Water Temple Workshop MEDS – Meeting of design students – was founded in 2010 by students from different countries and different departments of design. It was created with the intention of integrating architecture, interior architecture, industrial design, graphic design into a cohesive group. The […]
Takasugi-an, “A Tea House Built Too High”
Nagano Prefecture, Japan – Terunobu Fujimori Photography: Edmund Sumner Teahouses are an essential component of Japanese culture. They are very quiet. restful places typically designed and built by the owners to increase intimacy with the space. Takasugi was designed and constructed by architect Terunobu Fujimori on a family plot in Chino, Nagano Prefecture. The tree-bound tea house sits atop […]
Green Oak Writer’s Studio
Los Angeles, USA – Bertram Architects Built Area: 18.5m2 (200 sq ft) Designed as a quiet space with minimum distraction for a writer. Furniture is plain and built in to both maximise the available space and avoid distraction. Here are the architect’s notes: “Inspiration for the home office came from the “Russian word пустынь or poustinia (which literally means […]
Black Tea House
Česká Lípa, Czech Republic – Lenka Křemenová, David Maštálka / A1Architects Built: 2011 Area: Veranda – 10m2 (108 sq. ft.) Interior – 3.5m2 (38 sq. ft.) Traditional Japanese teahouses are as much a refuge from the chaos of life as they are a ceremonial focal point. But the concept and meaning has spread to […]
Earth House – An Ode to Yoon Dong-joo
Yangpyeong-gun, Gyeonggi-do, Korea – Byoungsoo Cho Site area: 660m2 Floor Area: 32.49m2 Project Year: 2008-2009 Photography: Wooseop Hwang, Yong Gwan Kim It would seem odd to think of a 14m x 7m concrete box set deep in the ground as a ‘house of the sky’ and yet it is! The tiny home […]
More Bamboo Brilliance
Flamingo Dailai Resort, Vietnam – Vo Trong Nghia Architects Gross Floor Area: 1,600 sqm Photography: Hiroyuki Oki OK – so it’s not a home. But it is a wonderful example of the beauty and flexibility of the world’s most renewable timber… bamboo. Bamboo is incredibly strong due to it’s long fibres and high silica content. […]
Tula House Sits Lightly
Quadra Island, British Columbia – Patkau Architects Photography: James Dow and Patkau architects You’ll find this home set on a remote clifftop on Quadra Island, some six hours drive to the north of Vancouver. A home for two and the unofficial headquarters of the Tula Foundation, the home replaced an old, dilapidated cottage on the […]
A House Among and Within the Loblolly Pines
Loblolly House – Kieran Timberlake Location: Taylors Island, Maryland, USA Built area: 2,200 sq ft (204 m2) Named after the tall pines that characterize its site on the Chesapeake Bay, this home “seeks to deeply fuse the natural elements of this barrier island to architectural form.” Positioned between a dense grove of loblolly pines […]