Casa Vale Do Lobo by Arqui+Arquitectura

Portuguese studio Arqui+ Arquitectura has recently completed the Casa Vale Do Lobo project.

This high-end 6,450 square foot residence and its incredible cantilevered infinity swimming pool are located in Vale do Lobo, a golf resort in the Algarve region of Southern Portugal.

Casa Vale Do Lobo by Arqui+Arquitectura:

“The Villa is situated in Vale do Lobo, a luxury golf and beach resort in Southern Portugal.

The plot is an end plot surrounded by golf, greenery and a small lake. Due to the location we have purposely opted not to create a clear boundary between plot and surroundings, rather using the actual building to create the distinction between public and private spaces.

The villa has been developed in a U shape around a central courtyard space helping to create a sense of scale and containment within the open surroundings. Within this courtyard we have created a suspended pool which becomes the main visual focal point of the villa. Being the main visual focus, we have opted for the creation of the pool as a sculptural element, while still serving the function as the main pool.

The suspended aspect of the pool permits the flow of the courtyard beyond the pool, thereby not containing the space. This upper main pool cascades down into a lower reflecting pool that can also be used as a children’s splash pool. The sound of the running water creates a very calm and relaxing environment. This lower reflecting pool in turn “visually” cascades down into the indoor pool situated within the home spa area. The continuation of the use of the black mosaic through into the home spa helps to strengthen this concept.

The outer perimeter of the main building volume has been demarcated with continuous repetitive vertical walls, almost like a fortress, establishing a clear barrier between public and private. The spaces facing into the courtyard on the other hand offer maximum transparency, minimizing the barrier between indoor and outdoor spaces. In order to strengthen the indoor and outdoor interconnection we have continued the same floor level through to the exterior with sliding doors that slide back fully with no distinct threshold between indoor and outdoor, extending the living spaces to the outdoor.

The main living spaces of the villa have been developed in an L shape plaster and painted white volume, with one wing dedicated to the 5 bedrooms and the other wing dedicated to the main living spaces. The single storey living space sits at an intermediate level between the 2 storey bedroom wing meaning easy access to the main living space from all bedrooms.

This main living volume projects out to the south in the form of a suspended glass cube in which we have placed a sitting area (snug) with fireplace opening onto the views of both the lake and the golf course. The roof of this volume serves as a roof terrace with mini-pool, outdoor living space and BBQ area for evening entertainment. The semi buried basement space houses the main indoor entertainment areas of the villa, such as games room, home cinema and home spa, as well as the double garage and service areas. The home spa faced in the black mosaics at the end of the volume create the sense of an infinite space.

The villa is a continuous play of solids versus transparency, which ultimately create a very interesting play of light versus shadow. In terms of materials we have tried to accentuate this play of solid versus void, by accentuating planes with the use of wood paneling both internally and externally, in which the doors etc have been hidden in order not to break up the sense of volume or plane. For the flooring we have worked with a grey sandstone which is a very homogeneous stone which helps create the feeling of a block of stone that has been carved, minimizing the legibility of the joints etc.”

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Casa Vale Do Lobo by Arqui+Arquitectura

source:alifesdesign

Edgar Street Towers Reconnect Lower Manhattan / IwamotoScott

IwamotoScott‘s design for the Edgar Street Towers in Lower Manhattan responds to its urban context and establishes a historical vision for a new hybrid of architecture, infrastructure and public space. The towers would reconnect Greenwich and Washington streets, acting as an east-west public way aligned with the primary north Manhattan street grid which is directly on the 5th Avenue axis. Double entrance lobbies located on the sides of the passageway open to the public. Twisting upwards, the passageway soars and pinches at the middle to allow for larger floor plates, settling at a civic space and rooftop sky lobby.

An interplay of scale and function serves the local neighborhood while also contributing to the public realm in lower Manhattan. The towers’ grand scale and form reflects its synonymous identity among other civic, cultural, and commercial landmarks found on 5th Avenue. The programmatic mixture marries certain spaces for living, working, art, performance, retail, and a branch public library through light arrangements at different orientations. A central atrium, or sky void, organizes the majority of the tower, channeling daylight from above via an integrated light-transmitting fiber optic array. The atrium also houses bio-filtration terrariums which act as the building’s lungs to occupy hollow spaces within the floors, providing clean air for its residents and public. The light-flow is reversed at night, as the fiber optic array is lit from integrated solar charged battery packs. A seamless design, The Edgar Street Towers blend right into Lower Manhattan’s grid of civic landmarks, enhancing public life through connection and engagement.

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Edgar Street Towers Reconnect Lower Manhattan / IwamotoScott

source:alifesdesign

National Olympic Committee House by Architects of Invention

This maple-veneered staircase twists and turns between the floors of an Olympic Museum in Georgia refurbished by UK and Georgia firm Architects of Invention.

The architects created openings in the interior walls of the four-storey building to connect the new staircase with exhibitions and other rooms on the upper levels.

A new reception desk was also added as part of the renovation, which features a large fissure that makes it look like it’s been sawn in two.

Photography is by Nakanimamasakhlisi Photo Lab, Nika Mdivani and I. Kopocova.

The text below was written by Architects of Invention:

National Olympic Commettee House 
Tbilisi, Georgia 2011

This work represents the idea of dynamics in sport with the abstract compositions of the staircase and the reception table.

The first object you encounter is the introverted desk with its never-ending fissure, and then you meet the extroverted staircase – like the open path to Olympus, where the summit meets its own reflection, inferring that striving never ends, that there is no limit to human achievement.

The building was built at the end of the XIX century for a private investor and it was later used as the residence of one of the leaders of the Communist party.

Later it was renovated in the 1960′s for government purposes and remained untouched until this year.

The structure was reinforced at the basement level which allowed us to make significant openings in the walls of the upper stories and place the staircase so it shifted from one space to another thus penetrating the structure.

The staircase was constructed on a steel base with MDF panels and it was finished with maple veneer. The steps and the side railings were made from the same wood.

The staircase was completed in three months.

Project – Office Building Interior

Status – Completed

Location – 22 Machabeli str. Tbilisi, Georgia

Program – Olympic Museum, Geonoch Offices

Building Area – 3000m2

Budget – 1m USD

Credits: Niko Japaridze, Gogiko Sakvarelidze, Nika Maisuradze, Dato Tsanava, Viliana Guliashvili, Ivane Ksnelashvili, David Dolidze, Soso Eliava, Devi Kituashvili PM, Eka Japaridze

You have read this article Architecture / Featured / Sports / Stairs with the title National Olympic Committee House by Architects of Invention. You can bookmark this page URL http://moderndeserthomes.blogspot.com/2012/10/national-olympic-committee-house-by.html. Thanks!

National Olympic Committee House by Architects of Invention

source:alifesdesign

House in a Pine Wood by Sundaymorning and Massimo Fiorido Associati

A staircase is extruded from the wooden shelves of a bookcase at this renovated house in Tuscany by Italian architects Sundaymorning and Massimo Fiorido Associati.

Named House in a Pine Wood, the single-storey residence was first constructed in the 1960s on a sandy site that is closely surrounded by pine, oak and myrtle trees.

The architects re-clad the exterior of the house in travertine marble and constructed a wooden deck around the perimeter.

Windows are deeply recessed and some are hinged at the centre so that they swivel open.

This is the second house in Italy we’ve featured in the last week, following a gabled house with boxy windows.

Here’s some more text from Sundaymorning:

Context

The pinewood of Marina di Castagneto Carducci was born early last century as a result of a process of reclamation of the coastal dune belt.

In the late Fifties architect Giancarlo De Carlo draw up an urban development characterized by the large presence of the landscape, in which buildings, surrounded by dunes dotted with pines, oaks and myrtles, with strong character and individuality are connected by paths that follow the free conformation of the landscape.

The consequence of this, but especially because a rapid process of tissue development built since the Sixties, is the heterogeneity of the architectural presence: buildings realized with quality, often characterized by the use of stone walls as an expressive character, with formal features that often do not disdain to look at the best Italian and European experiences of the Fifties, are counterbalanced by buildings of little value, inconsistent in their morphological and decorative devices, often the result of successive transformations and uncertain.

Opportunity

The work presented here was created by the occasion of a renovation of a summer residence built in the Mid-Sixties. The poor architectural quality of the existing building is an opportunity to think about the quality of the landscape in which the building stands on a sand dune, surrounded by pine trees located in singular points, often very close to the walls.

The project outlines a double perspective: on one hand the need to find a synthesis between the nature of the building – although still to be discovered – and the morphological and color values of the place where it is located, the other hand the desire to place the character of the interior in keeping with a trend made of comfort, domesticity, appropriateness. All this applies especially in the modulation of light and views, to the extent and shape of spaces, in the discretion of the materials.

A longitudinal ideal director, through the whole building, allowing you to find a convergence between two significant operational aspects: firstly, the redefinition of the internal space, which translates into a sequence of rooms through closely related to each other and with the landscape surrounding, and secondly the identification of the character of the building in a new morphology, at the same time natural and archetypal, finding in the horizontal sediment a new axpressive character.

From these thoughts descend the criterion of remodeling openings in the building: almost all different but built taking into account both the sequence of the interior, the relationship between the room and the external balance, the relationship mass-punching of the building.

This is especially evident in the large dining-room window, at the end of successive openings of the same size, framing a view of the dune landscape.

Matter

The emergence of the archetypal character of the intervention is manifested in the morphology of the new shape, which highlights the double-pitched roof and a certain compact terminals in the two fronts – but mitigating these formal features in the central, predominantly horizontal.

The material used for the exterior, a travertine marble, helps to read the morphology of the building as a result of an ideal unit mass made of different sediments, giving further color consonance with the surrounding landscape.

The limited range of materials – travertine marble cladding also present in the interior, plaster, teak wood, used to give continuity to the horizontal planes inside and out – helps to make a presence in the pinewood grove that thrives on a refined ambiguity: while providing a comfortable refuge from the outside world, both within himself introduces the landscape that surrounds it.

Click above for larger image

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House in a Pine Wood by Sundaymorning and Massimo Fiorido Associati

source:alifesdesign