Tag Archives: architecture design

This 3D architectural design envisions a modernist villa designed for a family of five in the hills of San Sebastián, Spain!

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Rico Villa is a cantilevered, modernist architectural 3D visualization designed for a family of five in the mountains of San Sebastián, Spain.

Known for their modernist structures that flair with midcentury elements, the latest from architectural visual designers, Amirhossein Nourbakhsh and Mohammadreza Norouz envisions a contemporary villa for a family of five in the hills of San Sebastián, Spain. In collaboration with Didformat Studio, the two designers took to the rich natural surroundings of the mountains for inspiration throughout the design process. Towering right above a calm pond, Rico Villa is a bilevel, cantilevered concrete structure with an idyllic, midcentury personality.

The beauty of modernist architecture is found in its simplicity. Generally recognized for the incorporation of semi-outdoor spaces, clean framing, and bulbous geometric elements, modernist architecture stands out for acute attention to the home’s details. Outfitting Rico Villa’s exterior with modernist design elements, Nourbakhsh and Mohammadreza incorporated semi-outdoor spaces on all sides of the home. Guests would be able to access Rico Villa from its north and south sides (via garage entrance on one side) and immediately find overhead concrete covering while still outside the villa. To enter the home’s interior, an internal set of staircases and elevators bring guests from one floor to the next.

On the first level, guests can enjoy a semi-outdoor space before entering the first floor’s interior. Cantilevered by design, the first floor’s semi-outdoor space is wedged right the gap between the two floors. Then, when guests are inside, they can escape to one of the many semi-enclosed terraces available onsite. Floor-to-ceiling windows expand the inside of the home and offer unfettered views of the natural surroundings, once more blurring the line between outdoor and indoor spaces. Sunlight also pours in through Rico Villa’s lengthy skylights, brightening the inside of the family home throughout the day.

Designers: Amirhossein Nourbakhsh and Mohammadreza Norouz

Posed beside a still pond, Rico Villa’s modernist edge is softened with its idyllic location.

The post This 3D architectural design envisions a modernist villa designed for a family of five in the hills of San Sebastián, Spain! first appeared on Yanko Design.

This unconventional cabin was built around existing trees to minimize the home’s environmental impact!

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There are A-frame cabins, farmhouse cabins, and modular cabins. Then, there are cabins that completely reimagine what one might look like. Slinked around the pine trees of a forest somewhere in South Lake Tahoe, a lake house retreat forms a one-of-a-kind layout, using natural sunlight to fill up its interior. Designed and built by Joongwon Architects to minimize the home’s impact on the environment, Lightus Retreat was planned and built around the forest’s existing trees, creating a shape for the home that was defined by the land.

Joongwon Architects built Lightus in a heavily wooded area, but they weren’t about to cut down any trees in the process. Moving away from the traditional symmetric and compact modes of vacation home architecture, Joongwon Architects aimed to design a lake house that first took cues from and worked in tandem with the environment. Opting to conceive the layout of Lightus by wrapping it around the forest’s existing trees, the final construction of Lightus forms an irregular and angular shape. Walking through the lake house, juxtaposing architectural accents seep the home in dynamic energy, moving between compressed corridors to open living areas and shadowed walls to bright spaces lit up by natural sunlight.

Speaking on the decision to build a vacation home that takes cues from nature before anything else, Joongwon Architects describes, “Where urban environments are compact, efficient machines for living, this new typology is splayed out, folded, attenuated.” The architects move on to explain that Lightus was organized by its roof’s configuration rather than the home’s layout, weaving in and beyond pine trees to form narrow hallways that bloom into expansive sun-drenched rooms, mimicking the flow of narrow straits connecting two larger bodies of water. Treated with Siberian larch for the home’s exterior, the siding of Lightus merges with the synthetic polycarbonate ends of the cabin to suggest the prospective continuity of this type of architecture. As Joongwon Architects put it, “As the environment shapes the cabin, the cabin shapes light, and the light shapes us. Let the journey continue.”

Designer: Joongwon Architects

Woven throughout the existing trees on a forested lot in South Lake Tahoe, Lightus Retreat forms an irregular and angular shape.

Moving in between compressed hallways and open living spaces, Lightus Retreat leans on a juxtaposed layout.

Natural light floods in through the many windows throughout Lightus Retreat.

Bright interiors accentuate the natural sunlight that drenches the kitchen.

A cozy upstairs den uses a translucent window to brighten and cool down the space.

Geometric and angled ceilings steepen and compress the interior volume.

The forest prior to construction on Lightus Retreat.

This futuristic transit hub is also an educational sanctuary in Mojave Desert!

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Last summer’s Young Architects Competitions (YAC) saw several amazing concept designs but this Hyperloop Desert Campus by Begum Aydinoglu of Pada Labs, Mariana Custodio Dos Santos, and Juan Carlos Naranjo is a part of the noteworthy 30 shortlisted ones. The challenge was about creating a building in the Mojave Desert, Nevada, that blends the future of transport while also standing as a “sanctuary of science.” Of course, it is an architectural competition so the structure had to visually “wow” the audience/judges.

The team kept in mind the current struggles we face as a planet and came up with a design that focused on environmental sustainability, resilience, and knowledge sharing. Hyperloop Desert Campus will be a building that houses multi-dimensional experiences. The team reimagined the Mojave Desert which is North America’s driest desert (and stretches across four states!) as an oasis in their proposal. The campus sports a stadium-like design with smooth curves bordering four courtyards that feature water elements to support the growth of tall palm trees and other greenery which will also allow for natural cooling and ventilation in the space. Hyperloop’s looping structure will have solar panel farms installed on each of its sides to generate renewable energy that can support the campus while the four courtyards will be designed to facilitate rainwater collection and greywater recycling.

“The symbiosis between the rough landscape and the iconic technology, helps The Hyperloop Desert Campus find its form. The building was designed to seamlessly rise from the desert ground of Nevada…the building’s design spirals up – inspired by the speed of travel – large corridors loop around these Oasis, crossing and interchanging levels, resembling complex interchange high-ways in form and function,” says the trio. 2020 taught us all a lot about resilience and that is the core of Hyperloop Desert Campus as well and will be seen in the form of inclusive knowledge sharing with educational tours, multiple technical cores that establish a fail-safe emergency system, and built-in expandability with adaptable interiors to allow for flexible future growth.

Designers: Mariana Cabugueira, Begum Aydinoglu and Juan Carlos Naranjo

This thinking pod was designed to create a spike in your thoughts!

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Have you ever wished for a thinking room? Where you could contemplate, ponder, and just be with your thoughts? Well, you are not alone, one of Europe’s largest and busiest children’s hospitals, Alder Hey, felt the same way. They involved all the hospital staff to sit in a specially designed thinking room called the Vox Pod so that they could reflect on their thoughts and provide noteworthy feedback that would be vital in the hospital’s continuous improvement.

The Vox Pod is created by WMB Studio to make this process comfortable by providing a space for the staff to record their feelings and suggestions on video. The pod is designed to be functional so that the staff wouldn’t have to go out of their way to give the feedback – mobility is one of its most important features so that it can easily be moved between locations to serve multiple departments within the hospital. The flexible nature of the Vox Pod also lets it double as an orientation point for key public gatherings, casual break space, or a micro-meeting room, and with its porcupine-like build, it is hard to miss!

The goal of the design team was to create an adaptable, movable, multi-functional booth that was also spacious and inviting. “The form is derived from a radiused and extruded equilateral triangle, divided into three equal modules. The segmentation facilitates ease of movement and allows for reconfiguration as individual elements, a connected pair, or as a completely enclosed pod. As well as fulfilling the key objectives of the brief, Vox Pod sits as a sculptural beacon within the hospital,” describes the team. It features an oculus roof light and porthole windows to allow natural light and also maintaining a visual connection to the wider hospital environment. The exterior features inverted acoustic foam pyramids that give it an expressive, unique visual aesthetic while the interiors are adorned with birch ply lining and warm-colored fabrics to invoke a calming atmosphere where one can truly be with their thoughts.

In my opinion, Vox Pod can work for every industry/workplace. Especially after we have all had a taste of working from home vs working in an office, I am sure we will have constructive feedback that can improve our work-life balance and pivot towards a more flexible lifestyle. I got all these thoughts without sitting in the pod – just saying.

Designer: WMB Studio

Concrete ribbons define this unusual concept house’s architecture

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We are all dreaming of vacations and making post-quarantine bucket lists. Where I live right now it is extremely hot and humid, so all I want is to go and live in a big house in the mountains for a while once the pandemic ends. The digital artists at TABARQ have breathed life into my vision with their DESI House and I have never seen a house that looks like the result of architectural quilling.

The conceptual DESI House is imagined to be set in the serene Austrian Alps with expansive windows that truly add another dimension to the panoramic views. What stands out is the shape of its exterior, it looks like someone rolled a sheet of concrete around a pencil for a crafts class! There seems to be a main tall cylindrical structure with a shorter one enveloping it and “rays” moving from there in different directions that probably divide the mansion into different wings. The detailed 3D renderings show the luxurious features of the house like the infinity lap pool with a jacuzzi and a local vegetation garden that makes the roof come alive – literally. Even the sweeping windows arent in any primary shape form, they look like someone erased the concrete with strokes of a brush to reveal the Alps. The concrete is paired well with the wooden interior which is, of course, subject to change based on the imaginary residents of this house.

Can’t help but think of the beautiful drive that will lead to this manor. Pinning it to my dream house list!

Designer: TABARQ

Nendo’s Tokyo house uses a giant stairway to keep the family and their 8 pets connected!

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When I saw Nendo’s latest project, there is just one song that started playing in my mind – Led Zepplin’s Stairway to Heaven because that is exactly the emotion this house radiates. The unusual-looking home was designed to be a part of one of Tokyo’s residential neighborhood where two families can live on different levels while being connected by the defining staircase that runs through the entire space. The house is called Kaidannoie which actually means house of stairs and it truly feels like it will lead up to heaven.

The stairway house has three floors in total, the ground floor was created keeping in mind that it would be used by the elderly members of the family and the remaining two floors are meant for the couple and their children. Of course, you can choose the living arrangement as per your needs but given how not-normal this house looks, it still has a very wholesome vibe which is showcased in every carefully thought out detail. What I love most about this house is that the stairway also acts as an indoor garden filled with abundant sunlight which becomes a large common area for the family to have some bonding time. Because of the staircase, there are no conventional floor boundaries which means the entire house has the luxury of a high ceiling. While most of the home is smartly concealed to keep the residents’ lives private, the south-facing side is made completely of glass allowing sunlight to fill the space and provide a zen view of the existing persimmon tree. A staircase is usually never the center of attention in any house, but Nendo’s home flips that concept on its head so fast that now you would only want a house where the staircase is the fundamental and spiritual pillar of the structure. The style in which this house is built invites a lot of warmth, light, and nature without feeling trapped like Harry Potter was in his room under the staircase.

The staircase starts right from the roof, the upper part is a semi-outdoor greenhouse and as you go down, it diagonally connects every level (and provides ample space for the owners 8 cats!) organically and then casually extends all the way out onto the street. This house makes me feel like even if I was quarantined in it, I wouldn’t feel like I am indoors all day because of how well it is designed. You’d think the oversized staircase would be jarring on your eyes but it surprisingly has a gentle demeanor that instantly resonates with you, maybe because staircases are a symbol of connection and moving upward…and also where many of us may have nostalgic moments that are sometimes the defining steps of our lives (just like 12-year-old Mr. Potter).

Designer: Nendo

The house encourages natural ventilation and balances the urban setting with peaceful greens.

The stairway not only makes the house stand out visually but it also conceals the functional parts of the home, offset to the north side, from the street.

The stairway house is a blend of traditional and modern Japanese aesthetic – the lush greens inside and outside harmonize well with the monochrome and concrete interior design.

So the staircase is connecting each family member and each corner of the house among themselves but also with the outside world.

 

stairway house

 

A 3D printed Martian oasis inspired by intersecting magnetic fields!

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What would you print with free access to a 3D printer and resources? My imagination is running wild between custom accessories and a tiny house! Architecture firm, MEAN* (Middle East Architecture Network), did just that and designed a complete 3D printed pavilion to welcome visitors from all over the world into the mystical desert of Wadi Rum in Jordan. Fun fact about Wadi Rum – it looks so much like the Martian landscape that it has served as a stage for multiple space movies, even for ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’, a cult classic!

The Desert Pavilion was created to be a communal oasis of heritage and micro-ecology. When you look at the renders, the structure is a blend of local Bedouin architecture with space-age technology. The design team has envisioned an innovative use of 3D printed panels by deploying them onto a CNC bent steel pipe system. To simulate a holistic tent-like structure, the team used a hybrid of 3D printed polymer shells on 3D printed concrete topography with the ‘Mesh Relaxation’ parametric strategy.

“We used the patterns emerging from the interaction of one space to another, to develop the floor plan of the pavilion. The physical phenomena of the magnetic force patterns between a number of nodes represent an opportunity for an interesting planning strategy,” explains the design team when talking about the use of field lines and supporting pipes to form funicular touch-points around which seating areas are laid out. Desert trees and shrubs are planted in the center to regulate the flow of atmosphere inside.

The outer shell is made of panels that overlap without gaps and also create a mosaic-like aesthetic that optimizes 3D printing. These tessellated panels filter light inside the unique space while keeping the ventilation window open. For night time, there are linear lighting fixtures installed aligned with the force field patterns to create gentle ambient lighting. The same funnels also act as wells of natural light during the day which is then beautifully diffused throughout the space – sounds like plants + good lighting which makes it a perfect photo spot! After all, the purpose is to create art in the form of architecture where locals and tourists can gather to tell stories, rest, and celebrate the desert in its most authentic state. Another fun fact – it can also be used as a case study for future Martian habitats!

Designer: MEAN*

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A zen minimalist cabin that brings nature in and takes distractions out

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We all know the movie Birdbox and we associate it with a stressful situation, I mean it was definitely didn’t fit in the comedy genre, right? However, I came across a different Birdbox by Livit, a Norwegian company, to counteract those feelings and really soothe our souls. This Birdbox is actually a prefabricated shipping container-like cabin that offers one-of-a-kind escapes to lush destinations surrounded by nature.

The cabins are simple, rectangular structures with huge circular and oval windows to give you a larger than life view of nature. Just like the exterior, the interior also has minimal decor which makes for a cozy space with a queen bed and a handful of chairs. The Birdboxes come in two sizes currently – the “Mini” at 10.5’ x 7.2’ x 7.2’ “Mini” and the “Medi” at 16.7’ x 7.87’ x 7.87’.” There’s also a separate “Birdbox Bathroom” which features a black tint one-way glass floor-to-ceiling window.

These box cabins are designed to be dropped in places with a minimal footprint that bring you closer to nature while providing comfort and shelter. They can be perched on mountain tops too because Birdbox cabins are made to withstand extreme winds and arctic conditions. There is also an option of having preinstalled solar panels in the cabins. Livit is currently selling three cabins and has two of its structures available for rent in its native Norway, one of them is on Airbnb – now you know where your next vacation will be!

Designer: Livit