Perched above the buzz of Beverly Hills sits Casa Perfect, a gallery of contemporary design set in a spectacular modernist home. Its founder David Alhadeff shows us the wealth of remarkable art and architecture that is to be found in the varied neighbourhoods of this sunny city. Monocle Films has partnered with Beverly Hills Conference & Visitors Bureau to reveal hidden gems through the eyes of local creatives.
Category Archives: Architecture
Design: 20 Ft. Wide ‘Pencil Tower Hotel’ In Sydney
An improbably narrow, six meter wide site is envisaged for a 100m tower in the downtown area of Sydney near its central station.
Our proposal embraces this extraordinary attenuated quality, proposing a ‘column’ tower on a low scale podium.
The podium references the delicacy and detail of its heritage neighbours, using the language of grand arching brickwork. A three story urban room houses multiple levels of lobby, cafe & lounge, visible through a large scale keyhole window. A walled courtyard garden for shared use overlooks the street.
The tower simulates the compression and extension of a column, through a continuous abstraction of the elements of a column: base, shaft and capital.
The facade begins with compressed horizontal screening, slowly transforming into exaggerated verticals at the top. Horizontals begin wide and flush with the outside frame, slowly thinning and receding at the height of the tower. Each horizontal is at the height of the slab, handrail and door head height.
The capital is joyfully expressed as a flying balcony and shell curves of a rooftop sundeck, pool and “hammam” spa. The soffit of the curved ceiling is brightly tiled, visible from both the street below and the city beyond.
Each floor houses compact hotel rooms, gathering light from the street, rear court or internal shapely voids. The voids are tiled to reflect light and colour into the rooms. Key hole windows provide a framed vignette of the seamless tiled surface.
Testing the boundaries of construction and design, the ‘pencil’ tower adds both a generous street room and a heroic skyline to its neighbourhood.
Buildings: ’98 Front’ In Brooklyn, New York By ODA Architects (Video)
Architecture firm ODA has completed a luxury residential building in Brooklyn that features Jenga-style facades made of concrete and glass.
Called 98 Front, the condominium building occupies a corner lot in Dumbo, a waterfront neighbourhood that has seen a flurry of new development in recent decades. The building is a short walk from Brooklyn Bridge Park, which stretches along the East River.
Designed by New York-based ODA, the project is intended to combine “sophisticated, innovative architecture with superior craftsmanship”. Roughly rectangle in plan, the building rises 10 levels and totals 189,000 square feet (17,559 square metres), Made of concrete and glass, the building’s exterior consists of irregularly placed cubic volumes that recall a game of Jenga. The projecting blocks create numerous overhangs and terraces.
Read more on Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/?p=1608959
Architecture: ‘Horizon House’ – Catalonia, Spain
Olot (Catalonia, Spain, population 34,000), an old town in the midst of the Pyrenees’ foothills, is well known for its forested volcanoes, country estates (“masías”) & evergreen pastures, but when Fina Puigdevall talked to her former classmate Carme Pigem about revamping her restaurant Les Cols plus building her new house, neither of them could have imagined that, later on, the former would become a celebrated Michelin-starred chef, and the latter a Pritzker-prize-awarded architect.
Puigdevall grew up in Les Cols, her family’s 15th century masia. In 1990, in an attempt to save it from development, she opened a restaurant in the former stables downstairs. With no formal culinary training, she worked her way to two Michelin stars by 2010 (which she has held since). In 2000, she hired Pigem and RCR architects to open up the space to the outdoors: they designed a light/water cube in the kitchen and a huge glass wall framing the apple orchard and chicken run.
The result is a dining experience that feels immersed in the outdoors. When Puigdevall wanted to expand her own home – a former mill straddling a creek – to accommodate her husband and three daughters, RCR Architects told her they wouldn’t touch the original structure, but proposed something completely new in the middle of the former corn fields. What they dubbed “Horizon House” is a corten steel structure carved into the hill. Large walls of glass can be opened to allow the fields – now planted with native crops like buckwheat- to enter the home.
English Estates: ‘Hillfield House, 1860’ – Gloucester
Hillfield House was once home to Gloucester’s Trading Standards officers — not that you’d know it to see the place today. Toby Keel takes a look.
This Grade II-listed building, in the Wotton area just north of Gloucester’s centre, was built in the 1860s and is filled with period touches, from the fireplaces and ornate cornicing to stone pillars and the extraordinary stained glass windows.
Just as grand is the first floor, accessed by a stone staircase, lit from a skylight above and ringed by an ironwork balustrade that looks out onto the space below. All your fantasies of hosting a Bridgerton-style ball can finally be fulfilled.
For all this grandeur, the living rooms themselves do offer cosier, more intimate nooks. Off the main hallway and the corridor beyond are a drawing room, sitting room, study, kitchen-breakfast room and seemingly-endless series of reception rooms.
Green Renovation: ‘1970 Manchester, UK Building’ By TP Bennett Architects
This video produced by Dezeen for TP Bennett reveals how the architecture practice has transformed an old building in Manchester into an “ultra sustainable” mixed-use office building.
Called Windmill Green, the office building is a conversion of an unused 1970s structure in the heart of the city that was due to be demolished. The site has been transformed into a mixed-use co-working space fitted with several sustainable additions geared towards carbon reduction and biodiversity, such as solar panels, beehives, and “Manchester’s largest living wall”.
“Sustainability was a key driver with this scheme and we transferred a derelict and vacant building into an ultra sustainable and high-spec workplace” said Yvette Hanson, the principal director of TP Bennett, in the video. “At TP Bennett, we bring a deep commitment to carbon reduction to deliver buildings that better reflect the way people live, work and interact, while at the same time fostering a positive social impact,” she added.
Developed in collaboration with real estate investment boutique FORE Partnership, the building features a ground level dedicated to retail and a facade covered with the green terracotta tiles that are typical of buildings in Manchester.
Skyline Views: ‘Honolulu’ – Oahu, Hawaii (4K Video)
Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii, is a U.S. city that currently contains over 470 high-rises. In 2011 it ranked fourth among U.S. cities in the number of high rise buildings, after New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, and just ahead of San Francisco.[1] In 2017, it ranked sixth, having fallen behind Houston and Washington, D.C.[2]
The first high rise that exceeded 350 ft was the Ala Moana Hotel built in 1970. The next high rise was the Yacht Harbor Towers followed by the Hawaii Monarch Hotel and the Discovery Bay Center. This was the beginning of the construction boom in the city. At the same time business and finance also boomed. During the 1990s new Residentials were built, including the One Waterfront Mauka Tower, Imperial Plaza, Nauru Tower and the Hawaiki Tower. There is still construction today on high rises such as the Moana Pacific East Tower and Moana Pacific West Tower twin towers, Keola Lai, Hokua at 1288 Ala Moana, Pacifica Honolulu, and The Watermark Waikiki.
Travel & Architecture: 14th Century Florence Baptistery Restoration
Four sides of the internal walls of Florence Baptistery have been restored, with the remaining four to go by the end of 2021. “Here come all those who wish to see admirable things” is the English translation of the words set in the marble inlay of the floor of Florence’s baptistery, as visitors enter through the Gates of Paradise.
These worthy items include the fourteenth-century mosaics depicting prophets, bishops and cherubs, which are enjoying renewed vigour after the restoration of four of the eight sides of Florence’s oldest monument. The internal walls of the baptistery began to be restored towards the end of 2017 following a restoration campaign on the external walls and roof.
Many discoveries emerged from the diagnostics, the first of their kind to be conducted on the monument, including the original technique used in the parietal mosaics; the presence of a pigmented wax on the green Prato marble, used to cover the white limestone that had formed due to water coming in through the roof, now removed to reveal the stone’s natural hue; and traces of gold leaf on one of the capitals of the matroneum, which could form evidence that the capitals were all originally covered in gold leaf.
In the first couple of decades of the fourteenth century, having completed the colossal feat of the mosaics inside the baptistery’s dome, the decision was made to extend the technique to the parietal sides, something that wasn’t part of the original plans.
It was a solution that allowed the mosaics to be superimposed over the marble covering and solve the issue of the monument’s static nature. Made-to-measure hollow terracotta tiles were used, cut and fixed to the marble on the baptistery’s walls with central iron linchpins driven back and welded in a straight line.
“A hurried sinopia was then conducted on the tiles and later the mosaic with a direct method and over days, which can still be identified and interpreted today,” explained Beatrice Agostini, planner and head of the restoration campaign of Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore. “Even the mixture used to apply the mosaic tiles is absolutely unique. Ordinary mortar wasn’t used. Instead it was more of a glue, and it’s the decline of this compound that has caused the most problems in this restoration.”
Ancient Architecture: ‘Temple Of Purtunus’ In Rome, Italy (4K Video)
The Temple of Portunus or Temple of Fortuna Virilis is a Roman temple in Rome, Italy, one of the best preserved of all Roman temples. Its dedication remains unclear, as ancient sources mention several temples in this area of Rome, without saying enough to make it clear which this is.
Visualization: Modern Villas Overlooking The Pyramids In Egypt (Video)
A Visualization of Modern Villas Overlooking The Pyramids Of Egypt.
Visualized by VanillaStudio: http://www.vanilla-studio.com/
Architecture by IMAM Architects: https://www.imamarchitects.com/
Boomers Daily 