Tag Archives: Architects

Books: ‘Out Of The Woods – Architecture & Interiors Built from Wood’ (2020)

This book explores the innovative and inspiring ways architects are using this universal building material. Spanning grand Alpine escapes to tropical getaways, plywood penthouses to mass timber high-rises, Out of the Woods documents their progressive and inspiring creations from the foundations up.

Humans have been building homes from wood for thousands of years, and yet, in a contemporary world of option and innovation, the most primitive resource could in fact be the most pertinent.

Stretching back to historic Japanese houses, becoming synonymous with resort accommodation, and intertwining itself in the modern trend of hygge, its tactility and warmth have influenced countless architectural design movements. Timber is fast emerging as a viable material of choice, a safe, sturdy, and sustainable alternative to concrete. Architects are rediscovering wood’s universal appeal, thanks to recent technological advances.

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Top Architecture Books: ‘Scott Mitchell Houses’

The first volume on his work, Scott Mitchell Houses is an exploration of the architectural designer’s impressive portfolio of projects. Mitchell’s houses are studies in space, materiality, and light. Emphasizing an elegant economy of space, his projects respond to the natural appeal of their locations, be they bucolic retreats on Long Island or resplendent beach houses overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The utilization of  monolithic concrete, glass and steel curtain walls, and  cantilevered roof planes reduces each building to its essential elements, cultivating a sense of balance and repose.

Merging formalist spatial logic and an atmosphere of calm, the work bridges disparate architectural typologies to create places that are both poetic and profound.

Mitchell’s monolithic forms draw on the surrounding environment via floor to ceiling windows that open onto vistas so cinematic that Tom Ford utilized one of Mitchell’s homes in his neo-noir drama Nocturnal Animals. Through previously unpublished photographs, readers are given an exclusive view into eight pivotal projects that span the globe from the Hamptons to Melbourne, featuring images by  Ross BlecknerScott Frances,  Trevor Mein  and  Steve Shaw.

A foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic  Paul Goldberger, contribution by fashion designer Calvin Klein, and essay by architecture and design writer and author  Michael Webb  further highlight the seductive style of Mitchell’s work.

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Design: ‘Jewel Changi Airport’, Singapore By Safdie Architects (Video)

Fulfilling its mission as a connector between the existing terminals, Jewel combines two environments—an intense marketplace and a paradise garden—to create a new community-centric typology as the heart, and soul, of Changi Airport. Jewel re-imagines the center of an airport as a major public realm attraction. Jewel offers a range of facilities for landside airport operations, indoor gardens, leisure attractions, retail offerings and hotel facilities, all under one roof. A distinctive dome-shaped façade made of glass and steel adds to Changi Airport’s appeal as one of the world’s leading air hubs.

Based on the geometry of a torus, the building shape accommodates the programmatic need for multiple connections in the airport setting. At the heart of its glass roof is an oculus that showers water through a primary multistory garden, five stories through to the forest-valley garden at ground level. The core of the program is a 24-hour layered garden attraction that offers many spatial and interactive experiences for visitors. Four cardinal axes—north, south, east, and west—are reinforced by four gateway gardens, which orient visitors and offer visual connections to the internal surroundings and other airport terminals. By night, the glazed facade helps dematerialize the building, revealing the glowing garden within.

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.

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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Top Architectural Design: ‘Cabin ANNA’ In Eindhoven, Netherlands (Video)

Architectural designer Caspar Schols is producing a flat-pack version of a garden shed with moving walls, which he built for his parents before he went to architecture school, as cabins for living and for working.

Schols drew on the Garden House pavilion he completed with no formal architecture training in Eindhoven in 2016 to develop two design: the ANNA Stay home and the ANNA Meet workplace. As with Garden House, the Cabin ANNA concepts have and inner beam-and-glass structure that is separated from the outer wooden walls and metal roof, and set on runners. This means they can be moved and outwards to create different layouts.

“A sellable, fully inhabitable house, a flat-pack that could be built and re-built anywhere in the world,” Schols said. “A dynamic home in the shape of an open platform to live with rather than against the elements, by playing with the configuration of the layers of the house – just like the way you dress yourself to suit different weather conditions, occasions and moods.”

Design: French Architect Jean Nouvel’s ‘Cave Resort’ In Saudi Arabia (Video)

French architect Jean Nouvel has revealed plans for a  subterranean resort and hotel that would be hidden within the rock dwellings of AlUla, a natural region of north-west saudi arabia. located deep within the sharaan nature reserve, the project references the nearby hegra — a famous archaeological location that forms the country’s first UNESCO world heritage site. set to be completed by 2024, the development will include 40 guest suites and three villas. meanwhile, a retreat summit center nearby will feature 14 private pavilions.

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Top Home Design Video: A ‘Storybook’, Converted Victorian Stable House In King’s Cross, London

Step through the looking glass and into the story-book inspired house of architect Sally Mackereth in King’s Cross, a playful world of mystery, discovery and fun in a former Victorian stable.

As head of her architecture and design studio, Sally draws from her 25-year career working internationally to design residential and commercial projects with her signature style, defined by material rich spaces that play with colour, texture and detail. Recent projects have included the updating of a listed artist’s studio in Chelsea, London, once the workspace of James Whistler, Augustus John and John Singer Sargent; and the interiors of pied-a-terre for an art-loving couple in Tribeca, New York City. A sense of fun and glamour runs through the practice’s work, and Sally’s own living spaces are no exception.

Kings Cross is a district in Central London, England, 2.5 miles (4.8 km) north west of Charing Cross. It is served by London King’s Cross railway station, the terminus of one of the major rail routes between London and the North.[3]

The area has been regenerated since the mid-1990s with the terminus of the Eurostar rail service at St Pancras International opening in 2007 and the rebuilding of King’s Cross station, a major redevelopment in the north of the area.

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American Architecture: Evolution Of Indiana Houses In Photographs

In the early nineteenth century, Indiana was at the intersection of ideas from the East and the frontier – resulting in a unique opportunity to express creative adaptions of residential architectural styles in America.

Industrialization later in the century created a new wealth to build extraordinary houses outside of cities; by the early twentieth century, Americans had created their own distinctive residential architecture with the Prairie Style.

This 288 page compendium includes over ninety houses in Indiana which are representative of the finest American residential architecture, from the Federal and Classical Revival style to Modern. The fascinating story of the evolution of residential architecture elaborates on the character defining features of each period, including the exterior form, massing, details as well as interiors – all beautifully illustrated in large format black and white photographs.

Authors: Craig Kuhner and Alan Ward

American Residential Architecture
Oscar Riera Ojeda Publications
Photographs of the Evolution of Indiana Houses

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