The Muxarabi House attracts attention for its singular volumetric form. Located at a condominium in the city of Piracicaba, in the state of São Paulo, it was planned for the owner and her two daughters. The uncomplicated yet impressive architecture of straight lines, the integrated spaces, and the connection with the exterior reflects the requests and lifestyle of the owner.
High Desert Residence is a Central Oregon home that finds a sense of calm and refuge in the balance between landscape and sky. This 4,300-square-foot, four-bedroom house is designed as a regular weekend sanctuary for an active couple, and a getaway for their extended family – a place where everyone can gather and be together, with a balance between private rooms and communal space.
Functionality, good ventilation, comfortable lighting, and access to views are some of the important required characteristics that make for human comfort in inhabited or occupied spaces. Nonetheless, those elements are becoming harder to achieve within smaller city dwellings. Architects and individuals, therefore, turn towards design solutions to create more agreeable and personalized settings.
An initial solution to upscale and widen spaces is to reduce the amount of standard solid partitions or walls and replace them with alternative means of spatial separation.
Nestled in the woods just below the crest of a hill overlooking a mountain lake in the Hudson River valley, this house is designed to blend into its natural landscape of boulders and rock outcroppings. Clad in a local granite of salmon and gray, with a green roof, sustainable mahogany windows with non-reflective glass, from a distance, the house dissolves into its surroundings.
Arriving up a winding driveway to preserve a number of mature groves of native trees, the house in section is set into a natural rock shelf into the cliff. This allows for an L- shaped plan that wraps around an internal rock garden, and entry into the level of living spaces; kitchen, dining and living areas. Since half the house is sunken into the hill, it takes advantage of the insulating properties of the earth which creates great energy efficiency.
The entry hall is paneled in reclaimed Canadian barn wood and opens into a hall looking into the adjoining garden. All rooms open onto a grand, one- hundred- foot terrace that looks into the forest so that the impression is one of being in a tree house. A cantilevered frosted glass canopy extends over the terrace to allow for living outside in inclement weather. The lower level includes all bedrooms and private spaces, each with a private terrace looking into the woods. The garage, guest wing and playroom are in the adjoining wing of the L- shaped plan.
From below, the house takes on a different appearance, of a castle in the woods, growing out of its rugged and rustic surroundings.
the couple’s Los Angeles home, a seminal work by modernist master Richard Neutra, which they recently restored. Known as the Singleton House, it was commissioned in the mid-’50s by industrialist Henry Singleton for a site on a spectacular peak atop Mulholland Drive. Views from the property take in the Pacific and the shiny skyscrapers of downtown, as well as the desert and San Gabriel Mountains.
studio de.materia has completed a set of twin apartment buildings in karpacz, a town in poland’s karkonosze mountains, whose design takes cues from examples of vernacular architecture. a solid stone plinth of hand-formed gneiss rocks forms the exterior of the two lower floors of the buildings, while a much lighter wooden frame wraps the upper levels. at the same time, strategically placed full-height glazing on all floors offers views of the surrounding landscape.