The Hill Plains House in Metclafe, Victoria by Wolveridge Architects is a beautiful building of simple volumes, materials and construction. The house is built using all native materials. The layout is open, pierced with many windows allowing the natural light in, and is clad in warm woods and cold black surfaces. Pops of vibrant color and creative use of end-grain woods are used to add visual excitement.
— Via Whitezine
If I lived in Austria this is the house I would want. The Haller House by Jürgen Haller & Peter Plattner is located in Mellau, Austria and is a brilliant mass of aged wood, steel, glass and concrete. The house, clad in wood that shimmers during the day looks as if the designers took a standard box and carved away at it, creating decks, windows, covered pourches and entry ways. The interior of the house was keep wide open and is covered in a warm feeling wood paneling. The fireplace in the living room is placed on a corner wall allow clear views from the kitchen.
— Via Contemporist
I want to got there! The Sky Is The Limit is a beautiful viewing platform by artist Didier Faustino over-looks the sea in Yang Yang, South Korea. The twin shipping containers sit atop 5 flights of stairs, 20m in the air and provide what has to be a really amazing view of the ocean in a totally cool looking structure. The structure & it’s 1:5 scale model are part of and exhibition called Container Architecture at the NRW-Forum Dusseldorf Museum.
— Via Deezen
The Seya House by the Japanese studio Suppose Design Office challenges the relationship between interior and exterior spaces. The house contains both within its exterior walls, blurring the line between inside and out. The use of simple materials and an open floor plan make this small house feel as is it is infinitely larger.
— Via Campsite
I love this simple idea for the Kobayashi family retreat two hours northwest of Tokyo in the Chichibu mountain range. The family wanted something unique for their weekend get-away and designer Shin Ohori of General Design Co. gave them just that. Ohori decided to combine the family’s love of camping with a simple structure that would include some of the creature comforts of a traditional weekend house. The retreat includes a fully functional bathroom with claw-foot tub, wifi for surfing the internet & keeping up-to-date, and a rustic but full kitchen and eating area.
Photographs by Dean Kaufman
— Via Campsite, via The Fox Is Black
The Carapicuiba House in Carapicuíba, Brazil by architects Angelo Bucci & Alvaro Puntoni was designed to be both a living space for the clients and a work space. The intentions was to keep the two spaces as separate as possible while keeping them within the same building. The building is built in a natural depression in the landscape, with the living spaces on the ground floor, below view from the street and the office spaces suspended above.
— Via Contemporist
I love the vibrant horizontal layers of color that surround the Sugamo Shinkin bank in Tokyo. The branch, designed by Tokyo based French architect Emmanuelle Moureaux, lights up at night creating a stunning color wash visible from every angle on the busy intersection. The interior of the space is equally fun, decorated in strong pattern set off by white walls and three large light-wells that puncture the building from bottom to top.
— Via Vectroave
Suncrest Residence by Heliotrope Architects is an amazing home built on the even more amazing Orcas Island in Washington State. The house is built in a ecologically sensitive area of the island that is home to bald eagles as well as old growth Douglas Firs and Pacific Madrone trees and has limited soil coverage over the basalt rock foundation of the island. The site included many large rock outcroppings as well as several small ponds and an amazing view of the ocean. The house was built to wrap around the largest rock formation, creating a long narrow house that also allowed for every room in the house to have a stunning view.
The clients wanted their favorite materials used, wood and concrete, in a way that would tie the house to the landscape. The house is filled with natural colored wood that references the forest outside and poured concrete that speaks to the basalt rock the island is made of. To combat the rain water run-off from the house, the gutters were piped to one of the small ponds nearby for natural filtration & absorption and where the grade didn’t allow it, roof gardens were used to minimize the effect.
— Via Contemporist
These eerily beautiful photographs of mysterious monuments in former Yugoslavia, by Antwerp-based photojournalist Jan Kempenaers, document the structures built to commemorate the victims of World War I and the Balkan Wars. The photographs are part of a new book, published by Roma Publications, called SPOMENIK. The book can be purchased for €27.00 on Roma Publication’s website.
— Via bumbumbum
The House Among Trees by architects Martín Fernández de Lema & Nicolás F. Moreno Deutsch is a beautiful example of structure and nature living in harmony. The house, in Mar Azul, a seaside resort near Villa Gesell and 400 km from Buenos Aires, is built around the local tress instead of over them. The municipality requires that there be free space on all sides of the building and limits the removal of vegetation. The clients were determined to save all of the trees on the plot, and in fact, use them to the house’s advantage, lowering cooling costs by being naturally shaded.
Photographs by Gustavo Sosa Pinilla
— Via Wanken
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