Tag Archives: retreat

This Undulating Villa With A Green Rooftop On A Japanese Island Is Currently For Sale If Any Millionares Are Looking

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Nestled on the stunning Ishigaki Island in Okinawa, this impressive green villa is called the Ishigaki Earth and was designed by architect Sou Fujimoto. It’s been a year since its debut, and startup hospitality brand Not a Hotel has recently put it up for sale. The expansive retreat occupies 9900 square meters and is located along the island’s pretty southwestern coast. It has a unique circular design topped by a lush green roof which eradicates the typical concept of a front and back, instead, it allows the villa to effortlessly merge with the surrounding nature.

Designer: Sou Fujimoto

The villa’s expansive roof is marked with large openings that provide stunning views of the sky, inadvertently masking the lines between the structure and nature. Fujimoto had a specific vision for the project which involved creating a serene connection between the villa and nature. He wanted to harmonize them and make them one. The circular structure and concave design are inspired by the undulations of the rolling hills, in turn, offering the residents unobstructed views, and allowing the island’s pretty greenery to merge with the ocean panoramas.

The relaxing retreat is amped with multiple amenities such as an infinity pool that merges with the sea, spacious living and dining rooms with beautiful views, a fully equipped gym, and an underwater sauna. The pool is a beauty to look at, as the sky and water meet there, building a fusion of the horizons. It is truly the perfect place to unwind and relax! The living area of the home extends towards the outside and is equipped with full-height glazing, allowing the surrounding landscapes to be connected to the home.

The retreat accommodates four bedrooms which can comfortably house up to ten people. Each bedroom in the house has been designed to provide a calming and tranquil experience. The bedroom on the waterside offers serene views of the sea, with a bathroom that allows the residents to catch glimpses of the horizon. The rooftop garden also accommodates a pool for kids to play in, as well as a fireplace to gather around and warm up.

The post This Undulating Villa With A Green Rooftop On A Japanese Island Is Currently For Sale If Any Millionares Are Looking first appeared on Yanko Design.

Minimal + tranquil seaside retreat is built using wood offcuts that were meant to be discarded

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Swedish firm Kolman Boye Architects recently completed a stunning retreat in Lillesand, Norway. The home is a pretty unique one since it utilizes offcut wood that would otherwise have been swiftly discarded. Deemed the Saltviga House, the home was built using 12,000 pieces of oak wood flooring materials. Architects Erik Kolman and Victor Boye who are the founders of Kolman Boye Architects got the idea for the home when they found out that the Danish flooring brand Dinesen had a lot of leftover materials available for use. “In our recent projects and in our teaching and research, we have come across Dinesen materials as both the traditional floors and as a scrap, a leftover, an offcut from the production of made-to-measure floors. Making and thinking with these leftovers from the production gave rise to the notion of making a building of them as a sympathetic way of using and ennobling scrap materials that would otherwise have been used as firewood. Besides being beautiful, the off-cuts are low in embodied carbon, and could offer an alternative to more commonly used and more carbon-intensive materials,” said the firm.

Pros:

  • Utilizes leftover offcut wood that would otherwise have been discarded
  • The offcuts used are an eco-friendly alternative to more carbon-intensive materials
  • The approach allows resources to be used frugally and smartly

Cons:

  • The windows on the ground floor are quite expansive, and don’t provide much privacy

Designer: Kolman Boye Architects

The project has been nicknamed “The House of Offcuts”. “It’s about using what’s available, of trying to find beautiful materials without clicking ‘order’ on a computer. When you look at old houses, they would always be built from the best materials available in close proximity,” he told Dezeen. “We wanted to explore how this thinking might look today,” said Boye.  It is situated on a rocky site located on the sea’s edge and is a newly built single-story home spread over five levels, this was done to minimize the impact on the landscape.

Instead of applying the wood randomly, the architect decided upon a single-layer stacking, that builds linear bands of different heights. “We tried stacking in different ways to help us understand how much material we would need, how it would look, and how much work would be involved to cut it to size and treat it,” said Kolman. The variety of color tones that were created as a result of this were quite visually appealing and pleasing. The entire home is made of three volumes, and one of the volume functions as a “wind barrier”, and is a connective element for the other main two buildings.

The interior of the home is spacious and welcoming, and the spaces are equipped with different ceiling heights on the ground floor. The connective volume is lined with long windows that provide expansive views of the sea. The interiors have also been marked with wood, especially Douglas fir cladding.

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Rural Brazilian home with an impressive cantilever is the ideal getaway retreat

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Nestled in green Upstate São Paulo is a rural Brazilian retreat called the MJE House. Designed by Jacobsen Arquitetura, the MJE House is located on a high ground, which enables the home to have stunning views of the rolling green hills in the region. It was designed to be an idyllic and picturesque holiday home for a family to seek refuge in when they needed a break from their hectic urban life.

Designer: Jacobsen Arquitetura

The home is deeply influenced by the modernist architecture roots of the country, as well as contemporary style and technology. The culmination of these different influences led to an ideal getaway home for a family. The house comprises of two main volumes, which have been placed on top of each other, at a right angle, to generously utilize the views and light. The volumes feature a long and low rectangular shape which allows the home to stay close to the ground, and perfectly merge with the surrounding landscape. A rather long wall built from stone connects the structure to the ground, while also providing a bit of texture to the building.

The upper section of the home features a series of freijó wood panels that function as privacy screens, and provide shade to the bedroom areas. This section is the one that artfully cantilevers over the landscape, and provides a platform for residents to enjoy the lovely views from. Much like the architectural style seen in the region, the MJE House also maintains a strong connection between the indoors and the outdoors. The living space on the ground floor features a vibrant and open-plan interior that includes multiple lounge arrangements and connects with a paved garden equipped with additional seating. A swimming pool is also added to one of the terraces, creating a truly awesome weekend home.

Another impressive feature of the home is a sculptural white staircase that spirals beautifully. It is situated at the main entrance of the home, at the intersection of two horizontal blocks. This creates a rather warm, inviting, and dramatic welcome to the home, one that perfectly complements the rural 21st-century Brazilian architecture of the building.

The post Rural Brazilian home with an impressive cantilever is the ideal getaway retreat first appeared on Yanko Design.

This tranquil retreat in rural Canada harmoniously merges Nordic + Japanese influences

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Tucked away in Canada’s Kawartha Lakes region is a beautiful and rather cozy retreat called the ‘Nortehaus’. At a comfortable distance from the city, the getaway was designed by MAFCOhouse to serve as a tranquil grounding space where guests and residents can experience some much-needed zen and joy. The retreat is completely enthralled by nature, and harmoniously integrates elements of sustainability, minimalism, and simplicity.

Designer: MAFCOhouse

The home is heavily inspired by Nordic and Japanese influences, and in fact, even goes so far as to incorporate the popular Danish concept of ‘hygge’, which translates to a feeling of complete coziness, peace, and wellness. The name of the ‘hygge’ home was coined by merging the Spanish word ‘norte’ (north), and the German word ‘haus’ (house), subtly nodding to the home’s multicultural owners. The home was built for a small family of three, who wished for a relaxing getaway from the hustle and bustle of Toronto. “Being a hideaway is an integral part of the nortehaus concept and so the exact location will be shared with you once you complete your booking,” said the owners.

The retreat can house up to four guests. It consists of two bedrooms and two bathrooms which are defined by tactile textural materials that add a rather natural and minimalistic feel to the space. Wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling windows provide stunning views of the surroundings, allowing the nature around the lodging to become the center of attention. The living room has been equipped with a fireplace, allowing guests to cozy up next to it and enjoy the warmth. The outdoor patio is a great spot to enjoy views of the forest and the river. “The primary bedroom features a queen-size 12-inch memory foam mattress, a large bathtub, and a beautiful ensuite bathroom, and of course, the view speaks for itself. Go to sleep and wake up surrounded by nature,” the family added.

“All elements throughout ‘nortehaus’ were selected with an appreciation for high-end materials. Steps from the coziness of the indoors is a short walk down to the riverfront where our guests can go for a lazy swim in the summertime or a cold plunge in the cooler months,” the owners concluded. The living, dining, and kitchen areas form an open, expansive, and spacious layout that beautifully integrates with nature. A second bedroom is included in this space, with a 12-inch memory foam mattress and an ensuite bathroom with a shower.

The post This tranquil retreat in rural Canada harmoniously merges Nordic + Japanese influences 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.

Chic Backyard Sanctuaries

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The M-Velope is one in a series of functional art structures designed to function as retreats in which to escape from the norm. Varying in size & shape, they’re made mostly of sustainable grown wood colored with environmentally friendly stains or paints. In every case, the design of the M-Velopes are generated from simpler forms that are subdivided, hinged together, & folded in or out of the original form in order to create unexpected transformations. As cool as they are on the outside, they’re even cozier inside! Take a peak —>

The one shown here is approximately twelve feet tall, twelve feet wide, & twenty feet long. The basic structure can be made larger, and/or the space inside can be increased by joining units together. The slotted panels, support frame, floor, and ramps all break down for shipping and can be reassembled almost anywhere with little or no foundation, depending on the site specific requirements.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

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(Chic Backyard Sanctuaries was originally posted on Yanko Design)

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