House of the Week 175: Tellico Cabin

Photography (c) Sara Dario and Harlan Hambright

Located along the Tellico Plains, Tennessee is a cabin designed Hefferlin + Kronenberg Architects. The site has fond memories for the client and the banks of the river and the adjoining valley holds historical significance to the Cherokee nation. The cabin with it's standing seams gabled roofs has walls clad in stone and dark stained cedar and a landscape of plants and vegetation indigenous to the Tellico plains. Inside heavy timbers support the steeply pitched roofs of the cabin that provide sleeping lofts for the guest beds in the raised volume.

House of the Week 172: Cocoon House

In a sense this is an anti-social building. It makes no attempt to blend to blend with it's environment [...] the intent was to demonstrate that harmony between the work of nature and the work of man can be brought about by clearly differentiating between the two

Paul Rudolph

The two bedroom, one bathroom cottage designed by Paul Rudoulph for a client H. R. Healy in 1950 sits on the edge of the river banks of Siesta Key in Sarasota. The concave roof was designed to drain rainwater and was constructed using a built-up spray-on process typical of cocooning disused US naval ships.

2014 Glenn Murcutt Architecture Masterclass

[image source]

Applications are now being accepted for the fourteenth annual Glenn Murcutt Architecture Master Class to take place in Australia next July at 'Riversdale', the Boyd Education Centre on the shores of the Shoalhaven River south of Sydney. The now famous event has attracted practising architects, academics, postgraduates and some senior students from 70 nations around the world since its inception in 2001. The two-week residential program consists of a design based studio, led by Pritzker Prize Laureate Glenn Murcutt and other eminent architects and teachers Richard Leplastrier, Brit Andresen, Peter Stutchbury and former Dean of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, Australia, Lindsay Johnston. The studio program is supported by tutorials, lectures, and guided tour visits to significant buildings by the 'masters'.

The Architecture Foundation Australia is a not-for-profit organisation.

House of the Week 161: Casa Rosenda

 previous Tejaban made from disused roof materials

image sources

The house in Guadalupe, Mexico was rebuilt through 10x10 a social service programme, which provides decent housing for the poor, by reusing waste materials to create high quality structures. The client, Rosenda lived in a 30m² foil Tejaban with her two daughters and three grandchildren, was redesigned by local architectural practice Covachita. The design features a 3 story tower accessible from the street with outdoor service and family areas to the rear of the tiny site.

Parrish Art Museum

The 34,400-square-foot Parrish Museum in Eastern Long Island designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron

New Work : Ten Bangkok

images via gotarch

Designed by CASE Studio (Community Architects for Shelter & Environment) the group takes a humanitarian and anthropological approach to creating appropriate housing in informal settlements. The projects undertaken by this collective often involve community members as participants in the process of improving their shelter and environment from community surveying to group meetings and workshops. This alternative housing option for the middle class, features 10 units for a variety of persons including some of the architects. The volumes are staggered, interspersed with gardens and courtyards creating common spaces for physical and visual respite and blurring public/private boundaries. The process, as well as the aesthetic has conjured a community identity and a relationship between dwelling and context - the result is an architecture that is the fruit of cooperative design where the architects are also the clients; the clients are also the architects

House of the Week 134: Villa Shoestring

Located on Gibbs Beach, on the West Coast of Barbados this single-family beach house is framed by the vegetation on site and the sea. The residence designed by Architects Cubed (Linda Moore & Shawna Beechley) with landscape by Talma Mill Studios is a modern interpretation of the Chattel - a timber vernacular house native to Barbados.

Photography: Bob Kiss

New Work ::: LAM cafe

photographs (c)Hiroyukioki OKI

LAM Café is a 350m² eatery in NhaTrang, Vietnam designed by a21 studio that derives its name from the local word for ‘louvers’ and expresses the structure and the architectural concept. The designed like a folded shell the roof is constructed of layers of coconut leaves, tiling and fishing nets.

A Plea for Modernism

A Plea For Modernism from Evan Mather on Vimeo.

The Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, Louisiana has been celebrated worldwide for its innovative, regionally-expressive modern design – the structure sustained moderate damage during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and has remained since. The school is slated for demolition this summer. DOCOMOMO Louisiana is advocating for its restoration via adaptive reuse. “A Plea For Modernism” is narrated by actor Wendell Pierce

Casa Kike

A tropical retreat in Costa Rica by Gianni Botsford. The architects aimed with this project to create an architecture of local adaptation; to climate, environment and culture. Casa Kike located on a beach lot facing the Caribbean Sea for the architect's father - a writer and his extensive library of books.

The design is a response to the tropical environment and the local culture, built using available materials and construction techniques. The distinctive roof shape, seamlessly rising from the walls, maps the path of the sun keeping the glazed elevations in shade.

The house is raised slightly off the ground and is comprised of two pavilions connected by a elevated walkway. Spatially the buildings serve the day and night time uses, a separation of public and private - one for work or leisure, the other more intimate containing a master suite. Nature prevails in this jungle respite for the writer, with its shape and minimal footprint offering an ode to the environment

modern masters from elsewhere pt.1

Eladio Dieste, an architect from Uruguay whose distinction was earned through his design industrial buildings and informal civic buildings such as markets and churches. Dieste was an innovator even among his Modernist peers, the elegance in his architecture was achieved by utlising thin shell brick vaults with tiled finishes - a cheaper alternative to reinforced concrete not requiring ribs and beams. He stated "deep moral/practical reasons for our search which give form to our work: with the form we create."

via Wikipedia

The work of Costa Rica based architect Bruno Stagno, attempts to bridge sustainable yet culturally and technologically relevant architecture in Central America




thanks for the link Shanella

Critical Regionalism - a review

Critical Regionalism remains the most fruitful formulation of Modernism intensifying the role of cultural practices involved in the making of architecture. After the 1960s, taking cues from the socio-political atmosphere, the notion became strongly aligned with environmental and social responsibilty. It implied an approach of design & construction that would impact the landscape & local culture as minimally as possible - yet still deepen andstrengthen the way we regard, experience and value them. The architects that have drove the development of this dynamic movement over the last three generations, are as follows (in alphabetical order - hence the A to Z)

Aalto, Alavo
Barragan, Luis & Bawa, Geoffery
Correa, Charles
Doshi, BV
Eldem, Sedad
Fathy, Hassan
Godsell, Sean
Harris, Harwell Hamilton
I
Jarmund/ Vigsnaes
Kalach & Alvarez
Le Corbusier
Murcutt, Glenn
Niemeyer, Oscar
O'Gorman, Juan
Prasad, Shiv Nath
Q
Rewal, Raj
Siza, Alvara
Tavora, Fernando
Utzon, Jorn
Villanueva, Carlos Raul
Warchavchik, Gregori
X
Y
Zabludovsky,Abraham

U is for Utzon

Sydney Opera House

Perhaps more popularly known for his Sydney Opera House, Jorn Utzon has taken the modern principles of architecture to capture the imagination of a people. His work attempts to create architecture for living that adheres to a strict structural and constructive process yet strongly influenced by local traditions.

V is for Villanueva

Central University of Venezuela

The works of Venezuelan architect Carlos Raúl Villanueva trace the conceptual evolution of the Latin modernity that prevailed in South America during the 1950s & 60s. His work often played "homage to Le Corbusier's definition of architecture as circulation and as a play of forms in light," yet afforded a regional precedent to Latin American architects believing that architecture could be a apparatus for social betterment, cultural and urban rejuvenation.


Central University of Venezuela

T is for Tavora

Fernando Távora's buildings were critcal constructions of modernity where he sought to integrate local and traditional principles into an otherwise Modern aesthetic. Despite the similarities of traditional houses with the values shared by Modern architecture, there is a sense of identity in his works created by the use of local materials, the inclusion of verandas and the respect for the Portuguese climate. Dubbed the father of "Escola do Porto (Oporto school)," of which Siza & Souta de Moura are included, he was instrumental in the contemporary development of the architecture in Portugal.

sorry for the late post - had great difficult finding any images of Tavora's work

S is for Siza

Santa Maria Church, Portugal

The work of Alvaro Siza establishes a dialogue with the site, through its placement and its sensitivity to the materials added with a profound social conscience. His can be defined as Modern architecture that is nourished by the poetry of society and the environment.


University of Oporto, Portugal

R is for Rewal

The work of Raj Rewal has simultaneously expressed both Modernity and regionalism, residing at the crossroad of the old and the new, blending traditional details with modern forms. The results are an oeuvre of contemporary architecture respectful of India's environment and history.


The World Bank, New Delhi

P is for Prasad

Indian Modernism02
Originally uploaded by architechnophilia.

Like many young architects during India's independence, Shiv Nath Prasad was keen to change the language of architecture to reflect the emerging nation. Along with Le Corbusier's presence, Modernism manifested in India and the works of Prasad found centre stage. His work was climatically sympathetic with a strong Modern aesthetic of bare-faced concrete with deep recesses to handle the Indian environment.

O is for O'Gorman

Juan O'Gorman works were heavily influenced by European Modernists, especially Le Corbusier, his buildings are some of the first examples of functionalist architect in Mexico. Like his modernist mentors his work was not limited to architecture, embracing the fine arts as well particularly the painting of murals. His latter work however favored a heavier influence from Frank Lloyd Wright, producing a more organic form of architecture. He integrated vernacular forms with modern detailing creating a culturally, socially, and environmentally responsive architecture.



his murals were heavily influenced by Diego Rivero