Around 15 minutes south-west of Hamilton CBD lies the rural suburb of Temple View, established in the 1950s and home to the Taitua Arboretum—a 20-hectare garden comprising woodlands, lakes and open pasture. It was within this bucolic idyll that husband and wife, Noel and Kylie Jessop, found a hilly, 6500m2 block offering wide-ranging views back towards the city, on which to build their family home. “The position is spot on and the views are amazing,” says architectural designer, Noel. The couple bought the site in mid-2018 and spent the next year fine-tuning the design of their home. “There was no real rush to complete the project at that time and so we had the luxury of really working through ideas and discussing what we required as a family of six—as well as what the site would allow, given its topography. “Kylie said from day one that it needed to be light and bright with an open flow and easy access to the outdoors, especially from the ensuite. We had stayed at a resort where the ensuite led straight out onto the pool area and Kylie was keen to replicate that feel.” Noel says it also needed to have a high level of functionality with six people living in the house. There is a mix of individual spaces and communal spaces and an ever-present connection to the outdoors, even upstairs where the only interaction is via the view through the windows, there is still a sense of being in the landscape. “The secret to successfully fulfilling the functional, financial and aesthetic parameters of the project was to keep the form really simple; just one room wide and to do away with extraneous spaces such as corridors. “There is a simplicity to the home, in terms of its layout and construction, that gives it a sense of timelessness—it functions perfectly as a family home and will function perfectly, years from now, when it’s just Kylie and I living here.” Click here to see the full project: https://archipro.co.nz/project/s-and-…
Tag Archives: Architectural Home Tours
Tours: Minimalist Modern Farmhouse – Hollywood Hills, California (Video)
A private, minimalist & newly built Modern Farmhouse awaits in the Hollywood Hills behind grand gates & soaring palm trees, minutes from the iconic Sunset Plaza.
Sited on an approx. 1 acre promontory & meticulously designed by Standard Architecture, the estate welcomes you with 3 parallel gabled volumes centered by an astonishing 30 ft great room. The pitch of its ceiling guides the eye toward the rear wall where exquisite glazing reveals breathtaking, unobstructed vistas from Downtown to the Ocean.
Amenities abound, the home provides endless luxuries include Styline doors for indoor/outdoor living, home theater, sumptuous master w/dual closets, remote control shades, well-appointed guest suites, gym w/outdoor lounge & shower, home theater, Crestron system, Sonos Sound, ample driveway parking & dual garages. It’s all brought together by timeless travertine paving & simple landscaping that culminates in a 20×73 ft infinity pool, accentuating the feeling of being suspended in the sky.
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.
Boomers Daily 