A Subterranean Home For The Modern Hobbit

Apr 6, 2015

Many buildings attempt to establish a sense of place, a sort of integration with surroundings, but this home by Santiago Viale literally becomes the place; an extended appendage of Mother Nature herself. Worn stone walls and a series of green roofs help reinforce the connection to the site. They also act as natural insulators along with the surrounding earth.

The House in Q2 is a subterranean dream home that takes advantage of a sloping site to create interior space that is sustainably protected and emotionally visceral. The home emerges as a flat plane that appears sliced into the landscape and becoming a part of the natural aesthetic.

The home opens up at the bottom of the hill as large sliding doors extend the interiors to the sprawling valley beyond. The kitchen and living areas join the master bedroom at the open end of the home and are given the most generous space, views, and cross-ventilation for passive cooling.

Jaw-Dropping Views Await In This Stunning Copper-Clad Beach House

Mar 29, 2015

A breathtaking and vertigo-inducing 250 foot drop to the Pacific Ocean provides a daunting, yet beautiful backdrop for this modern beach house. The Buck Creek House, designed by California-based firm Fougeron Architecture, marries the sea with the surf through strategic openings that frame only the most jaw-dropping views.

The unique aesthetic of the home’s exterior make a fleeting attempt to steal your attention from the crystal blue water, but do so in vein. The back end of the home is largely opaque for purposes of privacy, and clad in shimmering copper panels that change throughout the day depending on the light. However, there is no containing the sea-side facade, which opens completely to pier over the looming shear cliff.

The interiors are clean, sleek, and do just what only what’s necessary to supplement the ocean views. High vaulted ceilings expand the spaces vertically, allowing light and air to flow through the home with elegant determination. This spectacular beach house has three bedrooms, a cantilevered master suite and a living room that opens to an adjacent exterior courtyard.

Sleek Forest Home Where The Forest Is Actually In The Home

Jun 19, 2015

Building a home often means flattening the plot of land set to be developed, effectively destroying what made the site interesting in the first place. However, when trying to design something truly beautiful we find that architecture can only be as good as the land it embraces.

Meet the Casa Corallo by Guatemalan based architecture firm Paz Arquitectura. Rather than uprooting the trees that natively inhabited the building site, they literally designed the home around the natural vegetation. Towering trees flank, loom, and even pierce through the home in a way that blends existing and new in elegant symbiosis.
Two trees frame the entry of the mostly concrete home. The harsh material was used to provide ironic contrast between natural and man-made. The home spill down the natural slope of the hillside as a stone path melts together with low brush. The interiors are highlighted by tree trunks that climb up through the floors. In many cases, the location of the trees dictated the spatial organization.

While the home is large and imposing, the choice to involve the trees so prominently in the design speaks to the sensitivity the architect had towards the land.

Insanely Smart 309sf Apartment Transforms Into Gym, Theater, & Much More!

Apr 23, 2016

Hong Kong couple Andy and Michelle had a decision to make: should they purchase a larger apartment, or renovate the 309 square foot apartment they already had in a location they both loved? They had a long list of things they wanted that seemed unrealistic in the beginning: a full kitchen and bathroom, home theater, gym, storage, and it had to be cat-friendly (the couple owns three cats: Banoffee, Dumpling, and Tuxedo). – In a stroke of luck, Andy and Michelle stumbled upon design house LAAB, who, after 40 design attempts, came up with a way to make those seemingly-unrealistic requirements a feasible and chic reality.

A few dreary photos of Andy and Michelle's apartment pre-renovation. — A few dreary photos of Andy and Michelle’s apartment pre-renovation.

The team at LAAB ultimately came up with the idea to design the apartment around the “Form Follows Time” philosophy. This philosophy means that various spaces of the apartment, such as the bathtub in the full bathroom, can be opened or closed depending on what space you need whenever you need it. The bathtub can be covered up and used as a couch for the home movie theater, and later on it can be used as a guest bed in the guest bedroom!

The floor plans for LAAB's design for Andy and Michelle using the "Form Follows Time" philosophy. — The floor plans for LAAB’s design for Andy and Michelle using the “Form Follows Time” philosophy.

Special design elements for Andy and Michelle’s cats include a “cat walk” around the ceiling, a hidden litter box beneath the bathroom sink, cat food trays that can slide into the kitchen cabinets, and even a special den just for them. The materials, details, and mechanical systems were all designed with keeping the apartment dry, cleanable, free of undesirable smells, and all-around cat-friendly. The video below showcases Andy and Michelle, their revitalized apartment, and, of course, their cats.

Photos LAAB Design

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This Modern Pyramid House Pays Homage To Classic Architecture

Mar 31, 2015

Maybe the Egyptians had it right all along.

This contemporary manifestation of the iconic pyramid form makes an emphatic statement about the simplicity of an inherently structural architectural expression. Before architects and builders developed building technology to more efficiently battle gravity’s limitations, we relied on literal formal response to those rules. Simply put, the higher you built, the smaller the footprint. The result was the pyramid: a pure geometric form that allowed ancient builders to reach heights never seen before.

This conceptual design from Mexican architect Juan Carlos Ramos pays homage to this classic vernacular while mixing in features that can only be constructed using modern techniques and materials. It’s an interesting dichotomy of old vs. new, telling a story of how far we’ve come as builders. For example, one of the facades is completely transparent, housing a massive triangular glazed opening.

Horizontal and vertical slices are cut into the pyramid, opening up areas for decks, views, and even a car port.

The main living space welcomes an open view to the outside, speaking to the structural and architectural feats we are able to achieve.

Rustic Opulence Defines This Camp Martis Residence On Lake Tahoe

May 7, 2015

You’ve heard of modern-rustic, and now you’ll see what happens when sheer decadence collides with a rustic design. This spectacular modern home was designed by Swaback Partners and is situated on a large lot in the private community of Camp Martis, located on the shores of Lake Tahoe.

“A home for the high Sierra’s that does not fall in line with the traditional regional architecture that mostly is a dark and heavy composition. Instead, the concept was to celebrate the light and airy feeling of snow and the effects that it can bring to the interiors.”

Photos by Vance Fox

The Multipurpose Cube Inside This Home Is Pure Genius

Mar 7, 2015

On the outside this home appears to be your everyday little cottage, but inside things have changed quite a bit since it was originally built. A young family of four occupies the space, which saw a dramatic remodel. They removed the back half of the home, replacing it with an open living/dining room area and then added a totally unique cube/pod system in the center.

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The pod may seem a bit odd at first, almost a waste of space, until you understand what it’s used for. Inside its walls you’ll find a bathroom, powder room, and pantry. It also serves as a wall to separate the playroom from the main living and dining area.

Photos by: Lauren Bamford

It Looks Like A 200-Year-Old Crumbling Home, But Inside It’s A Different Story

Mar 10, 2015

We know not to judge a book by its cover, or in this case a home by its exterior. This 200-year-old stone house in Linescio, Switzerland certainly proves that better than most anything we’ve seen. Even as you walk around the outside and see the crumbling stone walls right in front of your face, you’d have a hard time believing it was recently renovated. That’s because it was only renovated on the inside.

Buchner Bründler Architekten completed this unique restoration that basically involved building a home within a home. They left the exterior more or less untouched, and built a fresh interior shell using a minimalist design approach. While the outside still retains the rugged stones that made up the original walls, the inside now has fresh concrete surfaces and modern finishes throughout. Each concrete slab was carefully brought inside and assembled; tall wood shutters fold open to reveal the original window frames, a new bathtub was sunk into the concrete floor, and a single slab was used for the kitchen counter.

Solar Powered Rustic/Modern Colorado Cabin Built Using Containers

Mar 10, 2015

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This contemporary rustic cabin uses shipping containers as pre-fabricated structural shells, and pairs them with more traditional site-built construction techniques for the remainder of the build-out. This allows for a more flexible use of the containers by not being confined to the fixed dimensions that container buildings must typically adhere to. If not for the exposed metal shell you wouldn’t know containers we even used. In many ways it’s the perfect implementation of shipping container construction. Materials and other building components can be flat packed in the unfinished shells and then assembled on-site.

This 1500sf solar powered container home project was completed by Boulder Studio HT.

An Old Barn Receives A Modern Facelift

Mar 30, 2015

An old barn in upstate New York proved an abundant source of modern inspiration for architect Kimberly Peck. On the exterior, little was done as far as architectural expression in order to preserve the traditional gabled roof form of the existing barn. The simple addition of three large sliding doors on one side open up the interior, which was the main focus of the renovation.

The old columns and beams have been left alone and remain the primary conceptual, providing a rustic framework for the secondary additions to adhere to. The result is a harmonious mixture of old and new, paying homage to the history of the barn while providing the comfort and functionality of a modern facelift.