* Residential Architecture: Bondi House by Carter Williamson Architects

Residential Architecture: Bondi House by Carter Williamson Architects: “..Huddled on a suburban street lined with semis and medium rise apartments, only the tanned surfers strolling by in thongs and bathers suggest that this Bondi home is only a short stroll from Australia’s most famous stretch of sand..The existing semi, hemmed in by its neighbours, was a dark, warren of rooms which turned their back on a small, love-less, rear courtyard. Noticeably absent from the home was the bleached, white sunlight synonymous with Australian seascapes. The brief was to re-imagine this suburban semi as a contemporary beach house, capturing not only the physical elements of a beach landscape; the colours, materials and textures, but also the ephemeral; the quality of light, and the relaxed holiday atmosphere..Clearing away the poky rooms at the rear allowed us to work within the existing building footprint, preserving the amenity of the rear courtyard. It also gave us a liberated ground plane, a platform, where we experimented with programmatic configurations of space that took on the form of two pavilions. The new pavilion piggybacks the existing home, efficiently stacking living and sleeping spaces upon each other. Where it touches the ground the building is light and porous, the walls dissolving to embrace the courtyard. In contrast, the sleeping areas above are more solid and restful. Light entering the space is controlled through a band of timber windows and sliding shutters..The spatially efficient square form of the addition makes the most of the tight block but generated deep plan which we liberated by cleaving the building in two. Set into the schism is a ribbon of glazing which swallows light into the centre of the home, pushing the upstairs bedrooms apart and programmatically defining the open plan spaces of the ground floor. The vivid, blue glass lining the void echoes the colours of the sea and captures glimpses of the fleeting sky above and the terracotta rooftops leading down to the beach..A second, smaller pavilion was designed as a flexible studio space for our creative client. The studio assumes the footprint of the existing garden shed and climbs up toward the house. With the glazed sliding doors to the living area and the studio pulled right open, the spaces are united with the courtyard, creating a dialogue between the two pavilions..In keeping with the relaxed atmosphere of the home, the material palette was selected to be low maintenance. The tiled exterior walls can easily be hosed down when salt gathers from the sea breeze. The texture and variation in these handmade glass mosaics catch shimmering light, like the surface of water. Timbers, oiled and raw, alongside galvanised steel and glass complete the simple, pared back palette. Stepping through the front gate, this Bondi home now feels distant from its neighbours. It feels beachy, like a holiday; light, breezy and easy to look after..”  Extensive glazing, skylights and natural light for this renovation and extension to an existing home; interesting form, interior volumes, details..

See our post on another home by Carter Williamson Architects: Residential Architecture: Balmain House by Carter Williamson Architects.

image: Courtesy of Carter Williamson Architects; article: Arthitectural

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* Residential Architecture: House D by Pauhof Architekten

Residential Architecture: House D by Pauhof Architekten: “..House D is a single-family dwelling with an integrated studio-gallery. Built on a steep slope, it weaves itself into its immediate surroundings and at the same time alludes to the more distant mountain landscape..we conceived House D as a kind of joint that extends past the steep slope to connect the existing elements..The structure of the house – that is, the section and/or the floor plan – results from the unusual nature of the site. On the south side, the house extends along the entire length of the building line, forming a four-story stacked volume (approximate height difference: 12 m). Otherwise, the rounded contour of the plan abstractly follows the property line. The structuring of the interior spaces is an artificial reflection of the specific topographic situation. All views are choreographed to capture as much of the still intact surrounding landscape as possible while blocking out the immediate, less attractive neighborhood. The spiral course of circulation manifests itself in the hovering roof structure (a snaking timber construction) that follows the curve of the northward-facing atrium, winds upward, is briefly supported by the bedroom façade, and then continues off into the vineyard as a tapering pergola..Four floors, each with its own character, determine the spatial continuum. The lower level houses the semi-public, neutrally toned studio-gallery with fair-faced concrete walls and natural illumination from a side light and clerestory windows on the slope side. The entrance to the house leads via a wide, half-indoor, half-outdoor, concrete staircase to the domain of the lady of the house: a two-story-high studio library and adjacent work area with a glass wall looking down onto the gallery. Grouped around the quarter-circle-shaped void of the gallery are the children’s bedrooms, a guestroom, and the bath- and utility rooms. Colors and materials in general play an especially important role and were planned in an inspiring collaboration with the artist Manfred Alois Mayr from Bolzano..Along the vertical, load-bearing concrete slab, another staircase leads up to the main level of the house. Here we find the building’s only large-area interconnected level space with two directly adjacent terraces. On this floor the house opens out horizontally, encloses a kind of atrium with connected living and dining room areas, a kitchen, and the master bedroom. The low room height (2.44 m) and the black wooden slat ceiling (like the façade) impel the eye outward. A one-and-a-half meter high ribbon window directly below the ceiling cuts through half of the house, affording a 180° panoramic view of the mountains. The upper level – enclosed in an isolated wooden box – is a private space, a kind of cozy family room..On the construction of the house: concrete was used for the underground areas and the vertical load-bearing slabs; timber for all the visible volumes from the first floor upward. All outer façades and the atrium-level walls are covered with a flamed oak cladding. The atmosphere of the interior rooms is strongly determined by the materials used: waxed oak, split natural stone slabs, fair-faced concrete (sometimes with a boasted surface), black terrazzo flooring, bottle-green glass mosaic tiles, sisal walls..”  Extensive glazing, natural light, views, privacy; interesting materiality and interior volumes..

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image: © Mateo Piazza; article: “House D / Pauhof Architekten” 25 Aug 2012. ArchDaily. <http://www.archdaily.com/265974&gt;