Category Archives: Homes

Future Housing: ‘iOhouse – The Space’ Is A Fully Off-Grid, Prefab Smart Home

iOhouse has built a luxurious fully off-grid living space for people who value privacy, design and nature, called the Space. 

All the utilities you need are integrated and completely autonomous, including water, electricity, heating and Wi-Fi. A smart device is all that is required to monitor and manage your living experience.

The SPACE offers you the most advanced conveniences of modern life with the smallest ecological footprint. Our model has been constructed only with the best premium materials and we genuinely believe this is the future of modern living.

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English Country Homes: ‘Adshead Park’ – 136 Acres In The West Berkshires

…Adshead Park, a striking Arts-and-Crafts-style country house set in 136 acres of formal gardens, woods and farmland in the hills above the west Berkshire village of Lower Basildon, three miles from Pangbourne and eight miles from Reading.

Adshead was the realisation of a dream for its owner, the charismatic businessman Sir John Madejski, whose ability to see ‘the bigger picture’ led to the foundation of a diverse business empire. It started with the motor classifieds magazine Auto Trader —launched with £2,000 in the 1970s and sold for £260 million in 1998 — but went on to span publishing, hotels, restaurants, radio, a top flight football team (Reading FC) and property.

Dealing with business is one thing; dealing with planning applications is another matter entirely, and it took all of Sir John’s legendary skills to negotiate the labyrinthine process required to build a new country house on virgin farmland in one of the most heavily protected areas of the Home Counties.

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Home Tour Videos: ‘Villa Vedramar’ – Ibiza, Spain

VILLA VEDRAMAR is located at the south west coast, one of the most protected nature reserves of Ibiza where the magical rock Es Vedrá rises out of the sea like a majestic sculpture. Cala Carbó beach offers two restaurants with great fish specialities. It’s one of the most relaxing beaches of Ibiza, with comfortable sun loungers and palm leaf parasols. On entering Cala Carbó, you will find our HARISSA office, a supermarket and our tapas bar LA SARDINA LOCA for food and drinks.

Ibiza is one of the Balearic islands, an archipelago of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea. It’s well known for the lively nightlife in Ibiza Town and Sant Antoni, where major European nightclubs have summer outposts. It’s also home to quiet villages, yoga retreats and beaches, from Platja d’en Bossa, lined with hotels, bars and shops, to quieter sandy coves backed by pine-clad hills found all around the coast. 

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Innovative Architecture: ‘Single-Story’ High-Tech Concrete Home In East Sussex, England (Video)

Professional deep-sea diver Adrian Corrigall and his wife Megan plan to build their new family home in rural East Sussex almost entirely out of concrete, with construction involving cutting-edge technologies conceived in Switzerland and never used to build a house before. However, the perils of being a pioneer soon become evident, and with both schedule and budget under strain, Adrian is forced to resume work as a diver, taking him away from the project for a month at a time.

Architecture: ‘Lipton Thayer Brick House’ In Evanston, Illinois (Video)

The Lipton Thayer Brick House sits on a leafy street in Evanston, a college town just north of Chicago. Designed for an investment banker, the dwelling occupies a slender, rectangular lot bordered by more traditional houses.

The project was designed by California-based Brooks + Scarpa, with Chicago firm Studio Dwell serving as architect of record. Rectangular in plan, the house consists of airy volumes organized around a gravel courtyard facing the street.

Italian Villa Video Tours: ‘Genoa – Lugurian Coast’

This beautiful villa with a mesmerizing panoramic view and private access to the sea, set into a cliff, is currently up for sale in Sori, province of Genova. This marvelous property is located just a few kilometres from Portofino, a prestigious town on the Ligurian coast. Furthermore, the villa encompasses three floors and possesses an internal surface of roughly 500 m². A mesmerizing swimming pool, is situated within this property’s leafy 1,200 m² garden. Furthermore, the garden consists in part of a vast relaxation area where you can appreciate the quietness, peacefulness and privacy of this unique property. Finally, the outdoor area displays also a spacious and lovely patio for your “al fresco” meals.

Genoa (Genova) is a port city and the capital of northwest Italy’s Liguria region. It’s known for its central role in maritime trade over many centuries. In the old town stands the Romanesque Cathedral of San Lorenzo, with its black-and-white-striped facade and frescoed interior. Narrow lanes open onto monumental squares like Piazza de Ferrari, site of an iconic bronze fountain and Teatro Carlo Felice opera house.

English Country Homes: ‘Great Baynden – Kent’

From the 16th century onwards, hop-growing was a major source of income in the Weald of Kent, especially around the village of Horsmonden, eight miles east of Tun-bridge Wells, where an enthusiastic American visitor described how ‘the oast-house towers of Horsmonden seem almost to plough the rich soil of their Kentish hopfield like graceful yachts on a gently rolling sea’.

Great Baynden is a superb Kent house that’s full of the sort of touches you’d hope to see when moving to a period home in the country, as Penny Churchill explains.

Such is the backdrop to handsome, Grade II-listed Great Baynden in School House Lane, Horsmonden, which stands on high ground two miles north-east of the village, with panoramic views over the Weald to the North Downs. 

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Design: ‘Oregon Coast Beach House’ By Cutler Anderson Architects

Beach house designed to withstand the forces of Pacific Ocean winds while still providing magnificent views of the sea and privacy from the neighbors. Completed in 2020

Since its founding in 1977, Cutler Anderson Architects has evolved to understand that the ultimate objective of any architectural design is to reveal what is true about all of the circumstances of a project. From place to program, from materials to shape, all components need to be understood and designed into a harmonious whole that reveals each component’s nature. This genuinely rigorous task has been both the focus and the intellectual stimulant of our practice and, it is hoped, will continue to be our passion in the future. This single-minded attitude has led to successful and award winning projects on three continents. The firms staff of fourteen is currently engaged in both residential and commercial projects throughout ten states, plus Poland and the Czech Republic. Our ultimate goal on every project is to produce projects that are not only beautiful but also emotionally enlightening.

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New Architecture Books: ‘Contemporary Houses’ – 100 Homes Over 2 Decades

This publication rounds up 100 of the world’s most interesting and pioneering homes designed in the past two decades, featuring a host of talents both new and established, including John Pawson,Shigeru BanTadao AndoZaha Hadid, Herzog & de Meuron, Daniel Libeskind, Alvaro Siza, and Peter Zumthor.

Accommodating daily routines of eating, sleeping, and shelter, as well as offering the space for personal experience and relationships, this is architecture at its most elementary and its most intimate.

Designing private residences has its own very special challenges and nuances for the architect. The scale may be more modest than public projects, the technical fittings less complex than an industrial site, but the preferences, requirements, and vision of particular personalities becomes priority. The delicate task is to translate all the emotive associations and practical requirements of “home” into a workable, constructed reality.

The author

Philip Jodidio studied art history and economics at Harvard, and edited Connaissance des Arts for over 20 years. His TASCHEN books include the Architecture Now! series and monographs on Tadao Ando, Santiago Calatrava, Renzo Piano, Jean Nouvel, Shigeru Ban, Richard Meier, and Zaha Hadid.

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