KAMITOPEN Co., Ltd.
KAMITOPEN Co., Ltd is an architectural and design practice based in Tokyo, Japan, and headed by Masahiro Yoshida.
Binary Boarding house | Andyrahman Architect
Binary Boarding house, designed by Andyrahman Architect, sets three main priorities: user, craftsmen, and client. The design process of these two boarding houses (Volume 4 and 5) shows that architect nowadays needs more than just cognitive (ideas) and motor (action) abilities, but they also need affective abilities (attitude and value) to treat others around his/her project area properly, more than just respect and sympathy.
Pengbu Central Commons | PLAT Studio
Pengbu Central Commons, designed by PLAT Studio, is a landscape design focusing on cultural and ecological relevance. Pengbu Central Commons is divided into zones to meet the community’s social needs. The central core is an active open space that serves the community with wide open space to accommodate large events and gatherings. The design provides significant canopy cover and other elements supporting health and wellness: a large activity lawn, strolling gardens, a playground and a sports area.
Sponsored
PLAT Studio
PLAT Studio brings sustainable and timeless places to life by integrating landscape architecture, urbanism, and research in our process and by thinking about the designs as a part of a larger environmental and societal framework. They strive to instill the site’s historical and cultural assets into the designs to create meaningful places for clients, visitors, and community. By seeking innovative approaches to site limitations, they are able to create progressive, innovative places for all.
Weekly Highlights 2021 #44
Archidiaries is excited to share the ‘Project of the Week’ – Intermediate House by Equipo de Arquitectura. Along with this, the weekly highlight contains a few of the best projects, published throughout the week. These selected projects represent the best content curated and shared by the team at ArchiDiaries.
Naji | Architecture Discipline
Naji, designed by Architecture Discipline, is a high-end, distinctive office space for a client engaged in manufacturing non-avionic components for the airline industry. While experimenting with inexpensive finishes and in an attempt to not overdo the materials, a dramatic palette is achieved by manipulating regular enamel paint to benefit an expensive and easy-to-maintain finish. The space was conceived primarily with the intent of augmenting natural Light and enhancing views through Technique & Technology.
Selected Interviews
Suitcase House | Melling Architects
Suitcase House, designed by Melling Architects, has a single sloping roof that approximately follows the pitch of the site. It creates a lofty and largely glazed volume at the living end, the effect of which makes a compact space feel larger than what it is. This is further increased by an outdoor patio on the glazed northern edge of the building.
Melling Architects
Melling Architects is a design-focused practice benefiting from hands-on experience with building that informs material choices, details and methods. The approach to design is one of simplicity. The simpler we can make things, the better they will be. The team is focused on efficiency and eliminating waste – which means good planning and clever design. They want the designs to have a story behind them or a ‘narrative’.
Cohuatichan | Cafeina Design
Cohuatichan, designed by Cafeina Design, has an exuberant context that guided the design of this holiday residence extension. The house’s aesthetics and materials were kept light and clean in contrast to the breathtaking surroundings to foster a unique experience of outdoor living while being in the comfort of a contemporary structure.
Selected Projects
Double Cube House | Carlos Zwick Architekten BDA
Double Cube House, designed by Carlos Zwick Architekten BDA, combines maximum proximity to nature, family privacy, and a sense of community. Gnarled tall pines paint a picture here, as well as a less obvious, but all the rarer geological peculiarity. Through the huge glazed patio doors and windows of the house it is present in every room. Only the side facing the street is closed off. A walkway covered with wooden planks leads from here into the house, which is divided into two separate residential units.
Cafeina
Cafeina is an international architecture firm that focuses on creating and transforming authentic and inclusive spaces through a multidisciplinary, human, innovative and positive approach. Currently, Cafeina is focused on the realization of creative projects that promote positive impact for real estate developers, urban and architectural design for governmental projects, and office and restaurant design for Mexico, the United States and Latin America.
Intermediate House | Equipo de Arquitectura
Intermediate House, designed by Equipo de Arquitectura, attempts to find the synthesis between the project and its construction. The functional flexibility of the house is adjusted to the interchangeable condition of the ways of living, where the user of the house becomes the architect of these transformations. Finding a middle point between the industrial and craftsmanship is part of the recognition of the available resources, where the balance between the two produces a technological amalgam that generates alternatives to conventional construction techniques.
Selected Academic Projects
MP House | TIES
MP House, designed by TIES, has a working environment that is an integral part of their daily routine in this house. The use of breeze block for this house’s exterior is intended to let enough sunlight enter and fill the room inside. With the intention of getting an additional dry garden, the breeze block is elevated enough to a level where people can get out onto the concrete roof just above the carport. The roof design uses a gable roof type, considering its identical shape to the classic design of a house roof.
TIES
TIES is an architecture, interior design, and construction practice that provides consultation and construction supervision. TIES believes that a healthy and aesthetic architectural design could exist together and support one another. In its contribution to society, architecture should be able to accommodate the needs of its users and improve their quality of life. On the other hand, architectural design need to be able to minimize its negative impact on nature.
House in Tamatsukuri | Reiichi Ikeda Design
House in Tamatsukuri, designed by Reiichi Ikeda Design, is a renovation project of a 3-story steel frame single-family house in Tamatsukuri, Osaka. As it is on a corner plot facing northeast, we focused on external insulation to reduce room temperature fluctuations by adding layers of urethane to the external wall. Furthermore, the vertical structure of the building that is composed of 3 levels+rooftop allows the “layers” to naturally “partition” and “connect” the living spaces at the same time on a compact plot of land, essentially separating different life activities by vertical movement.
Compilations
House among trees | Berson Arquitectura
House among trees, designed by Berson Arquitectura, wraps around the trees on the site, which would organize the architecture by providing the “time” element through their bark and its wrinkles. Spaces are suggested by opacities and transparencies that ensure privacy and allow a full family life. Space was structured as a grid of modulated and continuous columns, a system that arises from the exploration of connectivity between domestic space and nature.
Berson Arquitectura
Berson Arquitectura is an architectural practice headed by Barbara Berson with projects of various scales done individually and together with associated colleagues. She performs individual and group art exhibitions with concerns about sustainability and environment issues. She integrates various groups with concerns about local identity, bioclimatic issues and gender perspective.
Tennis Terraces | GRAS Reynés Arquitectos
Tennis Terraces, designed by GRAS arquitectos, is a new tennis club in the middle of the nature that combines a social building together with tennis courts. The clubhouse is designed not just as a social building, also as a viewing platform to watch the tennis games at the Centre Court. The building leans out to the court in order to enjoy views from all floors. White exposed concrete slabs cantilevers are created to maximize those views. In connection with the deck utility, the rooftop is also accessible offering extensive views of all the courts and surroundings.
1987. Lan ProSpa | Jacky.W Design (JWD)
Lan ProSpa, designed by Jacky.W Design, is an L-shaped glass box providing a hidden urban retreat to slow down the fast pace of life. The long passage that leads from the comfortable, soft reception lobby to the independent, private spa rooms centers on users’ spatial perception and experience rather than eye-catching forms or dazzling lighting. The functional designs around spa bed are based on customers’ convenience and use.
Jacky. W Design
JACKY.W DESIGN (JWD) is dedicated to providing design services, aiming to improve the brand image and market competitiveness of clients. As opposed to pursuing grandness, luxurious and fancy environment blindly, JWD believes that the design of commercial space should be consistent with the style and needs of targeted users. Therefore, looking into the brand and vision of the client as well as the project location is always the first step for JWD to carry out the design.
Luuwit Park | Skylab
Luuwit Park, designed by Skylab, introduces a mix of new activities, including a community theater, picnic shelter and restroom, off-leash dog area, a large community playground, interactive water feature, parking areas, walking paths, and community garden. The park’s design takes advantage of views to the Columbia River and distant Mount St. Helens while introducing a strong sense of the area’s native habitat to tie all of the elements of the park together.
Brickyard Retreat Renovation | llLab.
Brickyard Retreat Renovation, designed by IILab, intends to honor the authentic quality of natural materials and highlights the relationship between human beings and nature over time. The space embraces the local craft history while highlighting the evolution of consciousness that cultural products can bring to people and society. The architectural intervention in The Brickyard Retreat is structured around three main architectural elements: Glazed Tile, Old Kiln and Red Brick. The intervention leverages these elements to articulate program spaces, landscape features and a mutual respect to the site.
llLab.
llLab. is a design studio operating within the fields of architecture, design, art, urbanism, research, and development. Their work focuses on using design as a tool to improve social and cultural life through various scales, from urban projects to micro-architecture or installations. The principals are driven by an experimental and playful approach that leads to conceptually rigorous and well-executed design projects.
Gallatin High School | Cushing Terrell
Gallatin High School, designed by Cushing Terrell, is a place where people come together for a variety of purposes aligned with creating a unified, supportive, interactive community. The team infused the design with the ideas of cross-pollination and discovery, creating greater visibility into other learning areas to spur interest in trying something new. Incorporating wider hallways and an abundance of natural light support a learning environment that feels accessible and full of opportunity.
CLose
