Shoal Bay Bach - Parsonson Architects

Shoal Bay is a remote settlement on the rugged east coast of southern Hawkes Bay. The building is designed to be part of the rural setting, it is raised off the ground and sits beside the original woolshed, which has served the bay since the early 1900’s.

The bach is rugged yet welcoming and offers unpretentious shelter, it is the type of place where you kick off your shoes and don’t need to worry whether you walk sand through the house.

The bach is formed of two slightly off-set pavilions, one housing the bedrooms and the other the main living space. Decks are located at each end of the living pavilion allowing the sun to be followed throughout the day.

Sliding screens at the north-west end provide adjustable shelter for the different wind conditions, offer privacy from neighbouring campers and act as walls for outside sleeping.

Architects: Parsonson Architects

Location: Shoal Bay, New Zealand
Project Team: Gerald Parsonson, Craig Burt
Structural Engineer: Spencer Holmes Consulting Engineers
Builder: Phil Davidson Construction
Project Area: 220 sqm
Project Year: 2008
Photographs: Paul McCredie

VIA: TECNOHAUS

Alpa House - Anonimous-Led

The house is located in an exclusive subdivision in the city of Queretaro.
The access site with a very narrow funnel-shaped ends in a rectangular area of 50 mx 35 m.

Rear views overlooking the 18th hole of the golf course and beyond to the distant hills.
The shape of the ground and almost flat topography invites to create a facade blind and brutal toward the street and open and clean to the golf course. The client, a young couple with two children asked for display space where her love of sculpture and painting.

The program is organized into a container, an open, fluid and continuum is interrupted only by digging or floating volumes. At ground floor public areas are divided only by levels or furniture that is sculpture. The half bath is a sculpture that day onyx yellow tones reminiscent of the facade and at night like a lantern is enlarged within the double height of the room.

A sculptural bookcase divides the area more people from the room, the dining room and access to the bunker on the TV room and the anteroom. A screen separating the stairs is a kind of wall as an attempt from the ante-room. The excavations are made in wood tzalam creating a contrast to the marble floor gala.

Top floor three volumes of the rooms work like sculptures in the large container. The rooms are separated with each emphasizing their self perception and vertical filtering the light to illuminate the paintings. The container is lined with rough sandstone, the vacuum is sculpted to form the three white boxes in rooms that are intended to flee to the countryside.

Access marks the distant landscape, shows the continuous space and at the same time invited to a mysterious space in basement. A bunker in which hosts a bar and a cinema. The stone bunker emphasizes its connection and connects to ground floor with a deck to live with the garden and the golf course.

The hybrid structure of traditional system in the container and steel in the rooms allow you to create a sense of belonging and attachment while in flight and escape.

Architects: Anonimous-Led

Location: Queretaro, Mexico
Area: 1,750 m2
Program: Single Family
Photos: Led Anonimous

More Anonimous-Led

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Villa Vals - SeARCH & CMA

Shouldn’t it be possible to conceal a house in an Alpine slope while still exploiting the wonderful views and allowing light to enter the building?

Surprised that it was permissible to construct a pair of dwellings so close to the world famous thermal baths of Vals, the client seized the opportunity to develop the site, without disturbing the bath’s expansive views.

The introduction of a central patio into the steep incline creates a large façade with considerable potential for window openings. The viewing angle from the building is slightly inclined, giving an even more dramatic view of the strikingly beautiful mountains on the opposite side of the narrow valley.

The Local Authority’s well intentioned caution, that unusual modern proposals were generally not favoured, proved unfounded. The planners were pleased that the proposal did not appear ‘residential’ or impose on the adjacent baths building. The scheme was not perceived as a typical structure but rather an example of pragmatic unobtrusive development in a sensitive location.

The placing of the entrance via an old Graubünder barn and an underground tunnel further convinced them that the concept, while slightly absurd, could still be permitted.

Switzerland’s planning laws dictate that it is only possible to grant a definitive planning permission after a timber 
model of the building’s volume has first been constructed on site. This can then be accurately appraised by the local community and objected to if considered unsuitable. For this proposal, logic prevailed and this part of the process was deemed to be unnecessary.

Architects: SeARCH & CMA
Location: Vals, Switzerland
Design: Bjarne Mastenbroek & Christian Müller
Interior design cardboard bedroom: Studio JVM, Jeroen van Mechelen
Interior design excluding cardboard bedroom: Bjarne Mastenbroek
Interior advises: Christian Müller, Monica Ketting & Thomas Eyck
Contractor main structure: Kurt Schnyder Bauunternehmung, Vals, CH
Structural engineering: Alex Kilchmann, Schluein, CH
Glass façade engineering and construction: Walch GmbH, Ludesch, AT
Carpenter, interior finishing: A. Gartmann AG, Vals, CH
Cardboard interior: Nedcam shaping technology, Apeldoorn, NL
Cupboards, step chest: van hier tot Tokio’, Japanese Antiques
Electrical installations: Comet GmbH, Vals, CH
Plumbing & Water installations: Oscar Caduff, Vals, CH
Mechanical Ventilation & heating regeneration: Lippuner EMT AG, Grabs, CH
Avalanche protection: Geobrugg AG, Romanshorn, CH
Fire places and stoves: Maurus Cathomas, Ilanz, CH
Project Year: 2009
Photographs: Iwan Baan

VIA: TECNOHAUS