Exposed wood

The house stands on the site of an old family cottage, just steps away from the shores of Lac Plaisant in the Mauricie region. Thanks to its simplicity, restraint and refinement, the project embodies the architect’s attempt to capture the essence of cottage life – a wooden home designed for vacations and enabling true communion with nature.Featuring wood construction inside and out, the house’s single large gable covers all living spaces.Sited in a small clearing, its foundation invisible, the home is a pure, light volume resting on a grassy carpet.Its architecture is restrained and its scale modest, in tune with the clearing and lake.The exterior, both roof and walls, is clad entirely in white cedar boards.Both of the building’s long sides... More

Nestled longwise into the site and arranged in a semi-circle plot, this one main storey, a mezzanine and an annex playroom house designed for a couple and two children focuses on leisure and family life.Following client expectations, it plans to maximize the beautiful view to the horizon and to emphasize circulation between the different rooms promoting conviviality, contemplation and inviting to idleness.The design composition gains rhythm through the mix of the standard ceiling height of the aligned bedrooms area and the double ceiling height of the social area with a mezzanine placed at its center. In addition to the aesthetic function, the great ceiling height potentiates crossing ventilation and allows hot air to rise improving thermal... More

Originally a Dr. Pepper bottling plant and later a recycling center, the design of Charles Smith Wines Jet City preserves as much of its hard-won industrial patina as possible, while opening up the building to the surrounding Seattle neighborhood, the runways of Boeing Field, and dramatic views of Mt. Rainier. On top of the building, nearly seven-foot-tall letters wrap the building in billboard fashion, announcing “Charles Smith Wines Jet City.”The former 32,000 square-foot building is composed of two structures, a two-floor office building and a contiguous open-structure steel truss warehouse. Together, they provide space for everything from grape crush to barrel storage and bottling, to tasting rooms and sales. The transformation of this... More

The Wedge house is a custom-built single family home located in the northern suburbs of Athens, in the mountainous and full of pine trees area of Penteli, named Drafi. The site is quite distinctive and has many challenging features. The main complexity is the steep terrain with an almost 20-meter-height-difference from one side of the site to the other. The virtually vertical cliffs on both edges made access very difficult, so when a mild inclined surface appeared in the middle of the site it was quite inevitable that the house would be situated there.   Our design concentrated in creating a house that utterly blends with its natural environment sustaining most of the existing pine trees. This supposition unavoidably led to a split-l... More

Oceanbryggan Oceanhamnen is a new urban district in Helsingborg in southern Sweden, a stone’s throw from the central station and the old city center. KS’s project Oceanbryggan is located in the heart of the area and contains half of a block – approximately 55 apartments and three amenities. As a point of departure, the design relates Helsingborg Municipality guidelines for urban development: Time, Tolerance, Talent, Technology and “Not Tame”. The project enhances the harbor’s distinct characteristics and, at the same time it introduces a new, smaller scale and openness towards the city. Oceanbryggan establishes a meeting place between the city and the quay with strong materiality and good conditions for promoting community both at city and... More

Perched on a woodland bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, this home, designed in collaboration with Environment Architects (AOR) of Traverse City, MI, is an assemblage of three offset structures that play off each other— the ‘gathering’ structure contains the living room, kitchen and a covered 'vista' seating terrace; the two 'sleeping' structures house the master bedroom suite and three children's bedrooms. A dining area breezeway connects all three structures. Paul Warchol The roofscape has gentle undulations that follow the movement of the natural terrain and make a playful reference to the vernacular architecture of nearby fishing villages. The resulting rhythm of exposed wood beams provides layers of asymmetrical v... More

Like a geode, the Bay Area Metro Center’s most distinctive and unexpected treasure – a soaring atrium -- lies within. The monolithic building – a cavernous, 8-story concrete structure occupying an entire city block – was built as a military tank assembly plant in 1942 with low, 10’ ceilings and massive football field-sized floor plates, punctuated every 25’ by concrete columns. Its transformation into a welcoming, light-filled space that fosters unity across multiple floors was achieved by carving an atrium into the center of the building. The new Bay Area Metro Center is a collaborative workplace that consolidates four government agencies. The goals of the consolidation is to foster teamwork, pool resources, and gain operational efficienci... More

Founded by the art historian Jan Philipp Fruehsorge and two belgian art collectors the gallery ensemble explores the medium of drawing. It is the only institution in Germany which exclusively focuses on the presentation and promotion of this particular field. The new location sits on the ground floor of a prominent street corner in Berlin Mitte. The strategy for the conversion of the derelict space has been bold and subtle at the same time in order to provide generous spaces with maximum exposure to the streetlife. By that the gallery functions as a significant platform for the presentation of contemporary drawing. Scale Even though this project was initially meant to be only an interior refurbishment it evolved to a more complex... More

The place chosen to house the CoLAB was an old townhouse, in a residential area away from the buzz of Botafogo, on Rua Fernandes Guimarães. Originally a motorcycle workshop was in place, with a large front opening, metal roller door and cement floor. We decided to take advantage of this, since at the client's briefing the idea was to have a space that was an extension of the street, a transparent environment that enables and encourages artisanal production, referring to the idea of a laboratory of experiments in the "garage of home". The house has three floors, which add up to 140m², distributed as follows: on the ground floor, the public service, with lounge and bar; On the first floor, the most private activities, such as collaborativ... More

Andrew Berman Architect was asked to design a re-conceived and enlarged branch library located in Stapleton, Staten Island for the New York Public Library. A single room Carnegie branch library, designed by Carrere and Hastings in 1909, had been serving the community for over 100 years, and was to be renovated as part of the library expansion. An empty adjacent lot was allocated for a 7,000 square foot addition to create a new library of 12,000 square feet that would better serve the community and its current needs. The new library was intended above all to be an inviting, open, and accessible public space for the community. The new library had to be on a single level, stitch new building to old, and be handicapped accessible. An open pl... More

The Black Box House, designed for an international fashion buyer and his family of four, sits in a hilly suburban residential district with detached houses, about 15 miles west of Tokyo. The elevated 1,862 sqft/173 sqm corner lot is surrounded by light colored stucco houses with roadside windows covered by curtains which are a common suburban scenery in Japan. Rejecting this outside scenery while creating an introspective microcosmos filled with natural light and wind became the main concept of this house. Due to the adjacent north side street descending and zoning restriction, fenestration was gathered mainly at this side to disperse a soft glow throughout the day without any window treatment for privacy. Large sliding door connects the ma... More

This is a very complex project due to its extensive program and its location in the very historical center of the city of Troyes. The program consists of offices, a state committee plenary hall, a multipurpose room, other smaller committee rooms, and an 800-seat auditorium linked to the congress center area. The building takes up the space previously occupied by medieval gothic houses that were torn down through changes that have affected the area in recent times, starting with the destruction of an old monastery during the Revolution. In its place the Prefecture building was erected and, most recently, the Council Department building whose extension is the aim of the project. The trace left by the destruction of the gothic houses bet... More

Building name: Guest house, Przewłoka Place: Ustka, Przewłoka, Poland Used FAKRO product: FTP, FTU, FYP, FYU Guest house in Przewłoka, near Ustka, built on a rectangular plan with a compact shape resembles a country cottage. The aim of the project was to combine tradition and contrasting modernism. Thatched roof with bright facade decorated with wooden beams gives this place an old Polish climate where a touch of modernity can sneak thanks to applying large glazings. The interior of the building has an abundance of natural light and is decorated with white colour and main decorative element, namely exposed wooden structural beams. When selecting furniture the principle of minimalism was applied which is characterized by a small amount... More