The Pryor Residence acts as a home away from home, where the family of four can enjoy the outdoor life and nature rather then stay in the city.

From Bates Masi Architects:

The house occupies a hill in Montauk with a distant view of ocean, a site that the owners, a couple with two young boys, spent years to find. It is the couple’s reprieve from their home in the city, to share the outdoor lifestyle with their family and to remember their teenage years together in Montauk. The house design prompts the owners to interact with the surrounding environment, evoking experiences of camping.

The house is entered trough multiple areas for different guests and occasions: large glass doors slide open to the living area for a large gathering, a front door for a guest opens to the entry hall with a view of the ocean, and a sequence of auxiliary spaces – beach equipment area, outdoor shower, sand and mudroom – create a seamless ritual from the daily outdoor excursions for the family. In all living areas and bedrooms, glass doors and insect screens slide in and out from pocket walls, transforming rooms to screened porches or spaces completely open to the landscape. The living area, a double height space with kitchen, dining and living area, has thirty-six feet wide glass doors that pocket into southern and northern walls. When open, the dining room becomes a picnic area and the living room fireplace becomes a campfire. Layers of bronzed metal fabrics at clerestory windows in the living area fold and unfold to adjust sunlight for optimal brightness & temperature of the space. These operable architectural elements use the natural environment to create suitable living conditions.

The house is environmentally friendly in its overall construction and planning with such specifics as geo-thermal heating and venting system, solar panels, organic finishes and materials. The house is assembled, rather than built, with prefabricated foundations, panel siding and cabinetry minimizing construction debris or toxins such as concrete foundation for the site. Built-in cabinetries in the house minimize furniture space and free up activity space allowing a broad building program to be realized in 3000 square feet (280 square meters). The idea of “less constructions, better environment” roots in the construction method and the house planning preserving the site as close to its original state as possible for the best “camping” experience.

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From James Gorst Architects:

This new London house, designed to accommodate the continuum of two home working parents and a young family, draws on the archetypal Georgian townhouse model in it’s sobriety and careful consideration of proportion. To the street, the two storey stainless steel element projects forward of the main stone volume, revealing to the public realm the internal workings of the house and engaging with the street. Above, the leaf patterned glass room sits amongst the trees in Platonic detachment.

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The Scholl Residence is created in a fashion that would fit the need of the clients to showcase their photography and videography collections.

From Studio B Architects:

The Scholl Residence expands on the ‘Case Study’ series of the 1950’s. A difficult site possesses challenges in its drainage, topography and small footprint. The solution is essentially a detailed box where the details become the architecture.

The client, an art collector, requested a plan that will allow his collection to be housed. The exterior is composed of custom zinc panels, sand-blasted formed concrete, aluminum window/door glazing system and tempered glass railings. The project is reduced to its essence and is calculated and sober in its detailing. Resolution of plan and elevation were reduced to the lowest denominator.

Contractor: JD Black Construction
Structural Engineer: Pattillo Associates Engineers, Inc.
Landscape Designer: Elements, Inc.
Photographer: Aspen Architectural Photography

Awards: 2008 AIA Colorado Merit Award, 2008 AIA Colorado West Honor Award, 2008-2009 AIA Denver Architects’ Choice Award

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Steve Hermann considers this house, his “opus.” While he created it for himself with a project ranging back six years, now his plans are changed and he is selling this gorgeously furnished home and embarking on a new project for him self and his family.

The 13875 square foot (1290 square meters) home features five bedrooms, five-and-a-half bathrooms, a kitchen with a wine room and an art gallery that displays the Steve Hermann’s car collection.

“This house is my Opus.” Mr. Hermann says of the home. “It’s my greatest achievement  of a 20-year career.”

From Wall Street Journal

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The house is designed by Base Architecture and is located in Kingscliff, New South Wales, Australia. The most important in its design was it had to be informal, casual, comfortable and welcoming and most importantly to have a space for the clients quiver of long boards.

From Base Architecture:

Aptly named the “beach shack”, this black box sits within the Casuarina estate on a beach-front lot. The brief was to develop a house that was informal, casual, comfortable and welcoming and most importantly to have a space for the clients quiver of long boards. Surrounded by an eclectic array of houses it became apparent early in the design stage the importance of the surrounds, the environment and the conditions that the house would be subjected to such as wind, salt and sun. The use of galvanised steel and stained ecoply promotes a rawness to the skin that will age gracefully rather than deteriorate like most paint type finishes. Whilst on the inside the material palette is refined yet hard wearing in the form of polished concrete.

The double height entry with grass underfoot and natural landscape consists of a semi indoor/outdoor space constructed of clear weatherboards. This area allows for the wetsuit to be abandoned into the concealed laundry, the surfboards to be ‘racked’, and is able to be hosed out through the decking boards to discard unwanted sand and salt. Once within this entry, large timber clad sliding doors can be pushed out to open into the house. On ground level a simple program of living spaces that open up to a courtyard off one side and a main outdoor room to the rear of the property that overlooks a pool and dunes. Upstairs consists of simple bedroom and bathroom facilities that interact with the ground level and entry via a series of voids and openings. Overall this house evokes openness and a casual sensation that typifies what a beach house should be.

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This 750 square meters house is located in Zvezditsa near Varna, Bulgaria and is overlooking the nearby forest, somewhat blending in with its large windows.

From Bignatov Studio:

This 3-year case study brought us to unimagined places and experiences. It all started with a phone call from a client asking for a large rural house with a big winter garden overlooking the surrounding forest . Steep site formerly used as an illegal waste dump five thousands miles away from our office presented the rest of the challenge. We began brainstorming with putting the winter garden on top of the living spaces for catching maximum sunlight and with the desire for compact building with minimal footprint on site. The resulting concept suggested constructing (or even better growing) of a new ‘Home Tree’ that would accommodate to slope, exposure, air currents, precipitation and views, while providing shelter and support for its inhabitants, both people and plants. In the course of correspondence between New York and Varna we got so much excited about this idea that at the end we literary moved to site during construction. The experimental nature of this project required constant research and trials allowing us to grow with the Home Tree’s growth.

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One of the main directives in the project was to create a building that is appropriate in scale and height to the surrounding contours and allow the landscape to envelope the building.

From PIQUE:

Lot 108 has a prominent location in the Tetherow golf development featuring spectacular views of and from the golf course as well as desirable views of the distant landscape.  These features combined with our client’s demands for a variety of living spaces with varied degrees of privacy, formal and informal concerns and clear distinctions between workplace and play space armed the project with a long list of things the building needs to achieve.  Through in-depth site analysis, we were able to manage and prioritize these factors and create a building design that is intensely specific to its site and its occupants as well as sensitive to the environment.

It was most inspiring for us to see how this golf course is naturally nestled into the uniform topography, pine trees and lava flows of the high dessert.  With this in mind, it became incredibly important for us to create a building that is appropriate in scale and height to the surrounding contours and allow the landscape to permeate the building as much as possible.  These observations, informed by the site and program analysis shaped the building around the “lone tree” on the site and created a partially enclosed courtyard.  The proposed use of earthborn, local materials further stitches the building to this specific place.

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Villa Mecklin has mainly been a self-build project and the materials used are uncontrived, basic ones suited for the archipelago.

From Huttunen-Lapasti-Pakkanen Archtiects:

Villa Mecklin is located in the Finnish archipelago. It sits in a small depressions in the rock, its sheltered terrace extending over the summit of the rock.  In connection with the shoreline sauna, there is also a stove-heated cabin for guests.

The building materials selected for Villa Mecklin are uncontrived, basic ones suited for the archipelago. All wood surfaces have been left untreated and will turn grey naturally.

The Villa was built in 2008. The floor area of the villa is 70m2 and the sauna is 20m2.

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This small, 79 square meters, house is located on a gentle hill in Tokyo.

From Mount Fuji Architects:

This house for a couple is built in a residential area on a gentle hill in the northern Tokyo.
The site is located at the top of a hill connected with a narrow path leading to the actual building lot.

The ground level is gradually climbing higher from edge of the site.
Although the site has particular sense of oppression and dusky feel, and the actual building lot is completely enclosed by the adjacent houses, we realized with the characteristic of the place as the depths of the urban condition without exposing to the outside, and secluded from the town.
In this case, it is more suitable to extend the volume vertically rather than horizontally.

Similar reason can be found in the nature that a tree enclosed by other tall trees in a deep forest tends to have vertical directivity for its growth.
The geometry achieved through “Cartesian coordinates system” is typically applied in architecture since it has advantage in terms of the repetitive expansion in a fixed orientation.
However, this system is not suitable here as previously described. Rather, it is desirable to apply a geometric rule, which can pick up the subtle, close relationship and the balance between the site and its edge conditions.
Thus, we decided to utilize the “polar coordinates system” as the geometry defining this architecture, which describes the location of an element by the distance and the angle from the center of the site. (Please picture the 2-dimentional Voronoi diagram.)

In detail, the arch-shaped “column-beam” frame structure made by LVL/Laminated Veneer Lumber in 51 mm thickness is rotated in the regular angle of 11.25 degree (360 degree/32 frames) to form this architecture.
Each frame gets 55 mm higher than the previous one, therefore there is the height difference of 1.7 m in frame as they go around 360 degree.

This system forms the fluent Hyperbolic Paraboloidal curve surface providing the entrance to the roof terrace, while it also functions as the high side light that brings in the only open sky toward the east and the greenery of the neighboring house as a framed picture.
At the center of the polar coordinate is condensed with 32 pieces of the LVL columns, forming a large central pillar with the diameter of about 1.1 m.
The interior is divided into four territories by this central pillar, in the similar format found in the traditional Japanese houses in square shaped plan divided into four territories _ although the division does not occur in fixed 90 degree because the system is based on the polar coordinate.

In addition, the central point is defined at the eccentric point in the planar to differentiate the distance from the circumference, while the rotation angle of the column-beams is maintained in regular manner. With this system, the outer columns far away from the center have larger intervals, while the inner columns near to the center have denser intervals.
The frames rising up spirally make variations in the ceiling height, which define the characters of each four territories.

For instance, the intimate shadowy territory by the denser distance of the columns and lower ceiling is defined as the sleeping space, and the bright, high-ceiling territory applicable with large window opening by the larger distance of the columns can be suitable for dining space, The floor level is also shifted as skipped floors according to the division of the territory by the central pillar, although the height difference is based on the topographic condition of the existing site.
The completed house was formed by the strict rules of the geometry, but somehow it achieved the atmosphere unlike the artificial object.
When we sit down at the bottom of the central pillar and lean against to look up, those radially extending beams appear to be the branches of a large tree.
Surrounding of the central pillar stem provides the “place of inhabiting” for the life peacefully. Here, there is a different quality of the place, unlike the transparent “space” to be called as a “house”.
This make us realize that the center of a “space” may reflect on a social “meaning”, while the center of a “place” would consist of the sense of “existence”

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Previously a refuge for shepherds is now transformed into a small family residence with all the modern comforts.

From Herreros Arquitectos:

The project converts an existing vernacular structure that formerly served as a refuge for shepherds into a small residence for occasional use. The approach consisted of replicating the original volume symmetrically to conserve the original conditions and technical function of an apparently innocent construction that was designed intelligently where its orientation, ventilation and water collection facilities, etc. were concerned.

A dry-constructed outer wall stimulates an open and voluntary dialogue with the different aspects of the local climate. Seeing, lighting, ventilating or heating are various operations associated with two independent systems of openings and shutters that imbue the northern and southern faces with an ambiguous and enigmatic look. The interior reproduces the original and primitive compartments (for animals, shepherds and forage) in two directions: North (kitchen, bedroom and bathroom) and South (dining room, living room and study). Each compartment contains one single major object (table, sofa, writing desk, bath, bed and cooker) which serves to define each space and its use.

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