NOV
On a difficult plot in a well to do district of Zagreb, AVP Architects designed a Modernist house perched precariously on a steeply sloping site.
Although it appears like a single property, it is in fact two dwellings both enjoying the impressive views and yet their own privacy. Read more
OCT
Dating from 2008 the TOC house, designed by Mexican firm Elias Rizo Arquitectos, is set in a forest in Tapala, Mexico. The house has two sides to its character a formal one and one that hangs out in the garden!
The house is around 3,445 square feet and is single storey set on a generous plot. In plan it is simply arranged as two rectangular volumes set perpendicular to each other. The “vanishing corner” that this arrangement creates forms a generous porch to the front door which is framed in austere high stone walls. Read more
JUL
Clad externally in Larch, or as it used to be known in the UK matchwood, this summerhouse in Burgenland is the archetypical rural idyll for a person of sophisticated, minimal taste. It was designed by Judith Benzer Architecture of Vienna. Read more
JUL
It is not often that building owners encourage graffiti to the walls of their house, but at the instigation of Metaform Architecture, the architects for this apartment building in Cessange, Luxumbourg, the graffiti artist Sumo was paid to ply his trade.
What is interesting is that the art is not simply applied to the architecture, like the hanging of a painting, but it is conceptually more integrated. Graffiti usually occurs on building surfaces that are forgotten or architecturally irrelevant. Here those surfaces are elevated aesthetically and conceptually and are used to dress the forms of the architecture, or as the architect puts it to stage the architecture.
The building’s decorative features are really a side show to the dark powerful architectural form. This is almost always the case for graffiti artists working in a society that usually disparages their work. The artist’s frustration with the imposed constrictions is palpable in the use of such bright, garish colours that contrasts with the dark cladding of the building. used. Read more
JUL
Akiboye Conolly Architects are one of the true masters of structural glazing design. And though most are unaware of it, in this capacity they have advised and designed for a number better known architects. Today however, is an opportunity to look at one of their own experimental projects in more detail.
Their Solar House was conceived in the mid 1990s as two separate glass houses, one suspended above the other and interconnected with a double height volume. The alignment of the volumes accords with midsummer sunrise / midwinter sunset. Its structural design at the time was at the limit of computing power, with an inordinate amount of energy given to making the building as light as possible.
At the time of this building’s design environmental considerations were also much lower on the agenda than today, and regulations governing a building’s thermal performance, for example, were less proscribed. For Akiboye Conolly this lack of proscription enabled them to design a house clad predominantly in single glazing and which still proved to be exceptionally efficient. How did they do it? Read more
