Tag: Residences

Hovering Homes: 12 Cantilevered & Elevated Residences Maximize Views

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Supported by nothing but skinny poles, delicately balancing or tethered as if they might float away, these precarious-seeming houses laugh in the face of gravity. Cantilevering architectural volumes off cliffsides or elevating them well above ground level gives modern residences incredible views of their surroundings, whether they’re located on a mountain overlooking the sea or in the middle of a busy Japanese city.

Snohetta Treehotel, Sweden

Architecture firm Snøhetta has completed their addition to Sweden’s Treehotel, a hovering cabin that appears at first glance to be supported by no more than the staircase leading up to it. The design is based on a traditional Nordic cabin with a wood facade clad in charred boards of pine for a look that contrasts with the snow below, making the structure look heavy and solid to enhance its gravity-defying properties.

Tower House Inspired by Observatories

Tucked into the woods of upstate New York, GLUCK+’s Tower House takes inspiration from observatories for its mostly-vertical form. A bright yellow staircase is visible from outside through the glass envelope of the supporting tower, and the upper volume is topped with a terrace.

House in Yatsugatake Mountains by Kidosaki Architects, Japan

Jutting out over a cliff at the foot of Japan’s Yatsugatake Mountains, this home by Kidosaki Architects Studio expands horizontally out into midair to enhance views of the natural landscape through floor-to-ceiling glazing on three sides. The cantilevered portion of the home is supported by two diagonal steel cylinders.

Cargo Container Office Sticks Out Beyond Edge of Hill

Architect Patrick Bradley repurposed a 45-foot cargo container into an office for himself, allowing a third of it to hang out over the edge of the hilly plot as a sort of floating balcony encased in glass. The project makes very few structural changes in the container itself, staying true to its original form while modernizing its exterior.

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Hovering Homes 12 Cantilevered Elevated Residences Maximize Views

Crisp White Angular Cantilevered ‘House R’ in Germany

Crisp and clean, ‘House R’ by architecture studio Bembé Dellinger looks right at home in the snowy winter landscape of Schondorf, Germany. Perched on the edge of Lake Ammersee, the multi-story …

Cantilevered Conversion: Sleek Modern Cargo Container Office

While many intermodal freight crate transformations turn steel boxes into comfortable spaces, this project goes a step further both by taking maximum advantage of its material origins while still …

Floating Architecture: 16 Dramatic Cantilevered Structures

Jutting out over cliffs or hovering over impossibly small foundations, these 16 dramatically cantilevered structures seem like they’re about to take off into the sky. With designs that appear to …

[ By SA Rogers in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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WebUrbanist

January 24, 2017
Caviar Warehouse to Modern Home: 14 Converted Residences

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

You wouldn’t mind living in a stable, boathouse, boiler room, post office or even a wartime bunker once they undergo modern renovations like these, contrasting the original historic architectural elements with smooth new wood surfaces and lots of glass. A former caviar warehouse in New York City gets a lantern-like sunken courtyard, a bridge connects two old brick food factory buildings, a Victorian church goes contemporary and priests party it up in a seminary turned retirement home.

Concrete Bunker to Hidden Home, Netherlands

If not for the incongruously new and modern deck positioned adjacent to the entrance, you’d never imagine that this wartime bunker in Belgium is actually a functional residence. Architecture studio B-ILD transformed the half-buried structure into a vacation retreat big enough to sleep four people, but made no attempt to disguise its original purpose, leaving most of it stark and unfinished.

Bakery Warehouse, Australia

Two brick buildings in a former bakery warehouse complex stretch out to each other from across verdant courtyard with the addition of a new wooden bridge. What was once the Golden Crust Bakery in Melbourne is now a luxury residence large enough to house a Brady Bunch-like extended family, with the teenagers in one building and the parents with their younger children in the other.

Stable to Off-Grid Home, Spain

A crumbling stone stable in a remote area of western Spain is now an off-grid home with the help of Madrid-based studio Abaton. Oriented to maximize solar heat gain, the home sits within the restored stone exterior, its deep glazed windows hidden behind operable stable doors acting as shutters. A freshwater swimming pool in the front doubles as an irrigation tank.

Caviar Warehouse with Sunken Interior Courtyard, New York

A glass-walled courtyard sinks from the landscaped rooftop of a former caviar warehouse in Manhattan by Andrew Franz into the renovated interior, acting as an oversized skylight. A retractible roof lets air flow into what was previously a poorly ventilated and ill-lit space. Within the living quarters, modern elements contrast with original factory materials, like a staircase made from the old roof joists.

Victorian Church, London, UK

Look beyond the copious animal print and oversized dog paintings to the architectural bones of this Victorian-church-to-home conversion in London by Gianna Camilotti architectural studio. While the design is a bit heavy-handed on the contemporary additions, the beautiful timber elements and windows of the original structure still shine.

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Caviar Warehouse To Modern Home 14 Converted Residences

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Sunken Sky: Courtyard Light Well Suspended in Warehouse Loft

A formerly dark, poorly ventilated caviar warehouse is illuminated naturally thanks to a sunken courtyard with a retractible glass roof, connecting the …
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Rustic Ruins to Modern Residences: 3 Barn Renovations

Three historic barns are transformed into modern residences while preserving the look, feel and in one case every last board of the original structures.
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Quintessential Conversion: The Ultimate Warehouse Loft

A warehouse space in a historic Neo-Gothic building in Melbourne is transformed into a beautiful modern apartment with brick walls, archways and high ceilings.
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[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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WebUrbanist

December 31, 2015
House of Metal: 15 Steel and Aluminum-Clad Residences

[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

Durable, reflective and often becoming even more beautiful with exposure to the elements, metal is an unusual choice in exterior treatment for houses. These 15 metallic residences range from sculptural raised houses made of welded steel to sleek modern homes in Japan covered in privacy-enhancing perforated metal screens.

Soft Hard House by Terunobu Fujimori, Tokyo, Japan

What looks like a quilted metallic blanket has been applied to the exterior of a private home in a small town near Tokyo. ‘Soft-Hard Aluminum House‘ features a cantilevered gable end and an unusual aluminum cladding with a slightly squishy texture. While the shape fits in with the more conventional houses of the neighborhood, the metallic treatment certainly makes the home stand out.

Steel House by Robert Bruno, Texas

Architect Robert Bruno’s rusting Steel House is an icon and landmark in Lubbock, Texas. The sculptural home resembles a giant pig, and is made of 110 tons of steel, with an impressively cavernous interior. It was originally built in 1973, but over the years, Bruno continued to refine it, adding rooms and stories simply by welding on additional metal.

Balancing Barn by MVRDV, Suffolk, England

MVRDV’s gravity-defying Balancing Barn in Suffolk, England is another cantilevered structure with reflective metal cladding that mimics the look of bricks. The sheeting was chosen because it references the local building vernacular and reflects the surrounding nature over the changing seasons.

Cloudy House by Takao Shiotsuka, Oita, Japan

It may be named ‘Cloudy House‘ for its stormy gray color, but this gabled home in Oita, Japan looks quite bright and sunny when it’s nice outside. The entire exterior is covered in corrugated metal. The home features a tunnel that runs through its center to split the ground floor into two halves, each with their own entrance.

Croft Residence by James Stockwell, Australia

Reinforcing the rural context of corrugated iron, James Stockwell’s Croft House addresses “the core idea of shelter in an exposed environment” for a house with coastal vistas that blends into the land unobtrusively.

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House Of Metal 15 Steel And Aluminum Clad Residences

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Spaces That Shine: Steel & Copper in Interior Design

Metals like copper, steel, tin and aluminum bring a modern industrial edge when incorporated into interior design by way of stairs, fireplaces & fountains.
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Indestructable Cabin: Steel-Clad Apocalypse Home on Stilts

Steel shutters and sliding doors turn this award-winning lofted cabin into an ultra-secure shelter on demand, while stilts raise it up and help protect it from …
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Aviator’s Villa: Ultramodern House Made of Airplane Parts

A long, narrow ultramodern residence envisioned as a composition of disassembled aviation components offers an evocative home for a retired pilot. …
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[ By Steph in Architecture & Houses & Residential. ]

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WebUrbanist

May 27, 2014
Mountain-Shaped Residences with Walkable Green Rooftops

[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

Beyond any inherent beauty or formal references to surrounding mountains, there is a more profound proposition in this series of structures about the way we walk into, through and above spaces.

Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) was commissioned by a Taipei developer to create a mixed-use complex of housing, restaurants, cafes and more, all woven together with pedestrian walkways, jogging paths, gardens and plazas.

Their solution introduces a degree of vertical accessibility we are not used to seeing beyond the first few floors of a building, tying together indoor and outdoor circulation, connecting public and commercial spaces beyond ordinary horizontal surfaces.

The Haulien Residences are intended to be a resort destination and their shape was inspired in part by mountains and the ocean, but many of its signature green ribbons are sloped to accommodate paths and stairs.

In turn, the green roofs provided by this approach offer shelter and shade in a tropical region for the dwellings themselves while preserving views and providing gardens, decks and porches at various heights throughout.

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8 Great Green Roofs: Brief History of Eco-Roofing Systems

As impressive as those were, however, some modern examples have begun to rival them in terms of complexity, ingenuity and (of course) sustainability.
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3D City Farms: 5 Urban Design Proposals for Green Towers

Here are five of these remarkable architectural designs for sustainable (and stylish) urban farm towers that may revolutionize agriculture as we know it.
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5 COP14 Green Designs Address Climate Change

Green inventions and innovations from a dancing floor which produces electricity and fog catchers from the Cape Verde Islands to a no-waste city with zero CO2 …
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[ By WebUrbanist in Architecture & Cities & Urbanism. ]

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WebUrbanist

April 15, 2014