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Posts Tagged ‘Dwelling’

Split Level: Segmented Russian Rock Dwelling Bridges Lake & Cliff

02 Nov

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

lake front

Steep sites with limited buildable areas have always proved challenging for architects, but this home aims to navigate rocky terrain by breaking up a single dwelling into stair-connected segments.

lake rock residence

russian home above

Designed by Igor Sirotov, the PS1 House is a private residence to be built onto a series of stone lips that span from the lake’s surface below to access points above.

lake stone buildings

rrussian house detail

Weathered steel and concrete blend the buildings into the landscape while physically linking them via steps and railings as well.

russian interior spaces

The idea was driven in part by a desire to minimize the building’s footprint and need to alter the natural landscape, taking advantage of existing natural formations.

russian fireplace modernist brutalist

The design borrows from Modernist and Brutalist camps, austere but materially rich with aging in mind.

stone building segments

Steel frames and stone floors match the color and pattern palettes of surrounding site elements, providing semi-permeable shelters for bedrooms, kitchens and dining spaces at intervals between the top and bottom.

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Never Grow Up: Man Quits Job, Builds Dream Treehouse Dwelling

13 Feb

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

dream treehouse 12

Fed up with his fast-paced life in New York City, Foster Huntington quit his job, hopped into a Volkswagen van and traveled around the country before settling in Washington state to build his dream treehouse dwelling complete with a skate bowl and wood-fired soaking tub. The photos alone are enough to make anyone daydream about doing the same. Set against a hazy landscape just across the Columbia River from the Oregon border, two compact structures are nestled high up in the fir trees, connected by a meandering bridge.

dream treehouse

dream treehouse 2

dream treehouse 3

The 27-year-old adventurer and photographer gathered a group of friends to help him make his dream into a reality. It took them about a year to complete ‘the Cinder Cone,’ as he calls it, with one building functioning as a sleeping cabin and the other a workshop. Each measures about 200 square feet, and the sleeping cabin has bunk beds and hammocks to fit a group.

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The getaway feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but it’s close to Portland. The spacious hot tub on a deck further down the hillside keeps things cozy in cold weather, and Huntington and his guests have their own private skate park just a few steps down from the workshop. The friends involved in the building process referred to the Cinder Cone as “big-boys camp” and “Neverland.” It’s all very Portlandia, and The New York Times called it ‘Bro-topia,’ which sounds about right, but it’s hard to deny that the place is incredibly dreamy.

 

dream treehouse 13

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Huntington has produced both a short film and a photo book documenting the building process, and lots of photos – from the very beginning of the project to its enviable usage today – can be seen on his Instagram. 

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[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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Architectural Cultures Condensed: Vernacular Dwelling Collages

11 Feb

[ By Steph in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

architecture collage 1

Can you distill the architecture of a particular city down to an image of just a single building? Not effectively – unless you’re Sweden-based artist Anastasia Savinova, who scouts and photographs the most distinctive typologies of specific locations and then blends them into a single structure via paper collage. Entitled “Genuis Loci,” the series consists of monstrous, Frankenstein-like cobbled buildings packing in as much visual information as possible.

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“Traveling around cities and countries, I take pictures of buildings, look into windows sneakily, go to local shops, flea markets and bars, watch everyday life – all this helps to build the feeling of the Place. This feeling becomes a foundation for a series of large-scale collages. The Integral Image emerges from visual information and a dozen of associations. While architecture and landscape are visual components of the integral image of the Place, at the same time, this image is inseparably linked with a mentality and a way of life.”

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“It is saturated with ‘an incorporeal something.’ Ancient Romans called it ‘genus loci’ – the protective spirit of a place. In contemporary usage, ‘genus loci’ refers to a location’s distinctive atmosphere. A big house on each collage is composed of many buildings, which are typical for a particular country or city, in their connection with the land and the spirit of the place.”

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Some almost look like they could be real structures, while the rest are pure fantasy, towering dozens or hundreds of feet into the air, sprouting forests from their roofs or balancing precariously on ladders. Can you guess from the images which countries are represented here? If you can’t figure it out, check out Savinova’s website for all the specifics.

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[ By Steph in Art & Drawing & Digital. ]

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Prefab Hobbit Homes: Build Your Own Shire Dwelling in Just 3 Days

25 Dec

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

modular hobbit homes

Composed of vaulted panels covered with reinforced soil, these modular hobbit-worthy homes can be adapted to just about any site and constructed in a matter of days.

modular home construction

Produced in pieces by Magic Green Homes, then shipped to sites for assembly, each dwelling is made from prefabricated panels clad in green. The results looking much like something straight out of a Tolkien novel, but made out of shaped composite laminate, the same material approach taken to creating curves in some types of boat.

magic green house

green hoome interior

The process is designed for simplicity, eliminating the need for heavy machinery of specialized knowledge. Integral electrical, plumbing and ventilation channels come tucked inside the wall-to-roof modules as well, making systems installations easier as well.

green module warehouse

modular house construction

Overlapping flaps allow builders to join the various parts together while the integrated layers of green on top further hide any seams, making each house look like a seamless (w)hole. An interior layer of waterproofing ensures the attached modules do not leak.

green magic homes

modular green house

The overall modularity of this lends itself to easy incremental additions, expanding housing units over time. Designers or homeowners can also site the structures to blend into the surrounding landscape, much like the approach taken in underground homes and with many earthships. As with geodesic domes and other curved habitats, however, it may take a bit more than three days to decide how to finish and decorate the rounded interiors.

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Transparent Home: Glass Dwelling Puts Urban Life on Display

29 Oct

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

see through house japan

A beautiful and boldly open design, this see-through structure uses glass to reveal (and staggered layers to conceal) different parts of the everyday lives of its occupants.

see through transparent house

see through ome facade

Designed by architect Yuusuke Karasawa for a medium-density city lot in Tokyo, the snakelike S House relies on upper layers, underground areas and limited walls to create privacy where required or desired.

see through floor plates

see through ome interior

The split-level approach replaces corridors with staircases and serves to section off parts of the interior without creating excessive walls, all reinforcing the overall openness of the design (reminiscent of Modernist masters including Mies van der Rohe, Philip Glass and Le Corbusier).

see through house design

see through kitchen area

see through exterior view

Primarily white, limited wood accents are added and the neighborhood becomes a kind of passive decor, its textures visible from almost any area of the interior.

see through japanese urbanism

see through night view

see invisible house detail

Partly, the design plays on a cultural element of respect for personal space found in Japan – prying eyes are not something to be worried about.

underground bedroom japan house

see through master bath

see through rooftop deck

Nonetheless, the master bedroom and bathroom are located on the level below ground, and a rooftop deck also affords a higher degree of seclusion when needed.

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Modern Tree Houses: 14 Awesome Arboreal Dwelling Designs

18 Feb

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Modern Tree Houses Main

Some tree houses are crafted in organic shapes and materials to blend into their environments or designed as veritable castles in the sky, but these 14 are as modern as arboreal dwellings get. Ranging from a tree hotel in Sweden with a variety of eye-popping options to a simple freestanding backyard structure you can build yourself, these contemporary tree houses might get you daydreaming about your own private tree retreat.

Treehouse Conference Center

Modern Treehouses Conference Center

Your brainpower might just be multiplied if you attended a work conference in a treehouse like this one. The stimulating environment of a Belgian forest provides the setting for an elevated structure consisting of two large wooden cabins connected by a walkway, with a ramp leading to the grass below. Built by German architectural studio Baumraum, which is responsible for many other gorgeous modern tree houses, this complex is set on 19 stilts.

Beach Rock Treehouse in Japan

Modern Treehouses Beach Rock

Japanese builder Kobayashi Takashi created this domed ‘Beach Rock Treehouse‘ for the sole purpose of communicating with outer space. Seriously. It’s featured in the book ‘New Treehouses of the World,’ in which the author writes “A sparkling beacon among treetops, it is easy to imagine the dome succeeding at its mission to make contact with alien life.”

Tree Snake Houses

Modern Treehouses Snake

Inspired by serpents, these twin treehouses in Pedras Salgadas Park, Portugal take advantage of a sloping hillside. The structures extend out from ground level to hover within the woods, requiring no stairs or ladders to feel as if you’ve ascended into the treetops. Each unit is equipped with a mater bedroom studio space with a small kitchen and wash area.

Prefab Eco Perch

Modern Treehouses Eco Perch

Set it on the ground or put it in the trees – ‘Eco Perch’ by Blue Forest is adaptable to virtually any environment you’d like to place it in. The prefab luxury tree house unit is made of natural materials and can be installed within 5 days, taking up just 6 by 8 meters. The living area, kitchen and bedroom inside can accommodate up to four people.

Modern Treehouse for Kids

Modern Treehouses Kids Nashville

Those of us who were lucky enough to have a treehouse as kids often happily made do with little more than a rickety plywood platform and ladder treads nailed into the bark. How fun would it have been to call a two-story treehouse like this one your very own? This freestanding treehouse was built around a pine in the owner’s Nashville backyard.

Next Page – Click Below to Read More:
Modern Tree Houses 14 Awesome Arboreal Dwellings

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