Channel glass

Miya/LostVilla Hotel is located in Ninghai County HuChen township. Ninghai is a coastal county in the city of Ningbo, East China’s Zhejiang province. Lying between Tiantai Mountain and Siming Mountain, it boasts a beautiful mountainous territory. This hotel is converted from an old Granary station built in 1956. The site consists of six renovated old buildings and one new addition which functions as reception and meeting facility.The renovation process is taking on a sensitive approach to the surrounding beautiful scenery and the old Granary station buildings adjacent. The five of the seven old buildings were built of stone masonry. All windows were very small in size and located beyond reachable height. This became quite a challenge for us... More

The second renovation of a Chelsea loft for the same client involved reorganizing Murphy Burnham & Buttrick's original design, completed over a decade ago for a family with small children, to accommodate their current lifestyle with teenagers. Central to the renovation of the 4,000 square foot loft was the insertion of a two-story wall of translucent channel glass which modulates daylight at the core of the space.Bedroom suites and service areas were rearranged to create a more secluded master bedroom suite with a new dressing room, separating the teens’ and parents’ bedrooms, and the master bath was renovated with all stainless steel fixtures and transparent glass.Renovations to the open kitchen created a gleaming all-stainless steel i... More

The project demonstrates a total makeover of a typical polish family house from 70s of XX century. Clients have bought a site with existing 2 storey small building and their main objective was to make this house almost twice as big, whilst incorporating the old structure of a building and to completely change the elevations At the end of a “face lift” old white cube became a “black cube”. Existing house was extended in two directions, towards garden and west site boundary, achieving extra space for a living room on the ground floor and new parents bed room with wardrobe on 1st floor. Privacy has been the most important issue The site is located in urbanized city zone in residential area of high density, where achieving p... More

The public library system is one of the last bastions of public space in cities. Their buildings, collections, and staff play a critical role in equalizing access to information and providing the tools and infrastructure to strengthen individuals and communities alike.The Queens Library participates in this exchange of knowledge and materials for learning throughout 63 branches in the borough. Commissioned by the New York Department of Design and Construction for the Design Excellence Program, Glen Oaks Branch Library replaces an existing one story facility with a new 18,000 square foot high performance, LEED certified building. Located at the juncture of commercial and institutional properties and a residential neighborhood, the new li... More

Mod 2 is made up of six prefabricated modules that create a 1,200 square-foot two-bedroom, one-bath single-family house. The modules were built in a Lawrence, Kansas warehouse and transported by truck to the site where they were placed on the concrete foundation. The organization funding the project insisted on a garage. The street facing gaping mouth of a garage did not fit the avowed mission of Studio 804 so the sloping site was used to hide the garage door. The house sits on top of a walk out basement. The top of the basement is nearly at grade level at the front of the house but by the back it is fully exposed. A driveway ramps down from the street behind a retaining wall that creates a level side yard. It then U-turns toward the bac... More

This scheme placed first in the competition of ten Swiss-American team’s designs for the replacement of the Washington D.C. residence of the Swiss Ambassador. It is not only to be a private house but also a cultural gathering place on which standards and self-image of a country are measured. Sited on a hill with a direct view through the trees to the Washington monument in the distance, a diagonal line of overlapping spaces drawn through a cruciform courtyard plan was the conceptual starting point. Official arrival spaces and ceremony spaces are connected along this diagonal line on the first level, while private living quarter functions are on the floor above. Materials are charcoal integral color concrete trimmed in local slate and sand-b... More

The site for this floating home, in the heart of Seattle, is an outboard slip on a dock on Lake Union with views west towards Gas Works Park . Constructed on concrete floats that are 24 feet wide by 44 feet long, the homes on this dock are situated so that the shorter dimension faces out to the lake. For the layout of the house, our client chose an inverted plan where the living spaces are situated on the upper floor, taking advantage of the view, while bedrooms are on the lower, float level. Stepping onto the float, one encounters a broad exterior deck that runs the length of the float; this deck leads to the front entry while also providing access to boat moorage adjacent to the float. The front entry features two exterior walls of cha... More

The Nolitan Hotel is a 55 room boutique property in downtown Manhattan. It also features a restaurant at grade and a roof deck. The building, interiors, restaurant and rooftop were designed by Grzywinski+Pons. The Nolitan is located on the corner of Elizabeth and Kenmare Streets. Kenmare is a wider thoroughfare with a comparatively larger scale than the neighborhood - Nolita - that it bisects. It was our intention for the hotel to act as architectural and programmatic connective tissue joining the northern and southern parts of the district. The lot itself is a rather constrained trapezoid but it offers a lot of facade and exposure (principally northern) in relation to it's area. Grzywinski+Pons wanted to celebrate and exploit that oppo... More

Steep canyon walls dominate this wooded site next to a creek in California's Big Sur region. When the owners first commissioned us, local governing agencies were intent on leaving the land as it was-overgrown and uninhabited. However, working with ten consultants over three and a half years, we satisfied all the requirements necessary to build a modernist 2,500-square-foot two-bedroom family retreat here. The structure sits lightly on the land, respecting the ecologically fragile nature of the site, and is precisely attuned to its forces. A formal object in a natural context-like Stevens's jar on a hill-the house holds its own in this tall, cavernous place, neither dominating it nor dwarfed by it. The building is composed of four volu... More

MOPI elementary school is located in an urban but very green area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It’ s main façade faces a busy avenue that connects Rio´ s west and north zones. The opposite side of the building overlooks a national forest park with mountains, preceded by single family houses and lots of vegetation. The building was conceived as four separeted volumes connected by open balconies and derived from a “U” shaped whole open towards the forest. The two elliptycal volumes that faces the avenue contain the main classrooms, while the other two water drops shaped volumes contains secondary spaces such as administration, pedagogic room, art, library , computer classroom and so on. The whole building being split into four distinct v... More

This three-bedroom house is located on a spectacular site in the south Coast of Big Sur; it pays homage to the natural beauty and power of this California landscape. The overall design strategy is one of imbedding the building in the land, creating a structure that is inseparable from its context. The design reinterprets the organic architectural vocabulary of Big Sur houses built in the 50’s and 60’s. The site offers plunging views a 250’ foot drop to the Pacific Ocean both along the bluff and the western exposure. The house--a long thin volume -- conforms and deforms to the natural contours of the land and the geometries of the bluff. The main body of the house is composed of two rectangular boxes connected by an all glass room; a one... More

The design for the recently completed 5,000 square foot Derfner Judaica Museum located within the Jacob Reingold Pavilion at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, New York establishes an inclusive prototype for the design of cultural institutions in the era of the aging, urbane, baby-boom generation. It is a forward-thinking yet humane environment comprised of accessible spaces that are architecturally comfortable, curatorially comprehensible and technologically equipped to meet the needs of both the current and future elderly. The museum is an ideal model for how to design cultural institutions that complement the sophisticated sensibilities of the baby boomers who will choose to defy their chronological age.  The urbanity of the Derf... More